For landlords, it is a way to avoid having to pay business rates, utility bills and insurance while their premises are empty.
In this case, empty premises.
Yet the council helped choose the free schools' locations by finding empty premises to accommodate them.
When BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce visited this summer, she reported on a "recession-hit town" with "forlorn empty premises".
If none of the 1,400 stores is reoccupied, an extraordinary 19% of Britain's shop premises will stand empty.
The social enterprise recruits occupants for temporarily empty premises, often earmarked for demolition or refurbishment, for an average weekly occupancy fee of £60.
Thus there will be a new "reoccupation relief" in the form of a halving of business rates for operators taking on empty premises.
Thomas added that the tax break for retailers occupying empty premises could also have unfortunate results: "It is open to a lot of abuse.
"We have a worrying number of empty premises in Britain and it is a problem that has been growing all year.
Occupy all those buy-to-leave homes, and the squillion empty premises being hogged and sat on by supermarket chains so that no one else can use them.
