26th September 2026
The UK Government has announced a £210 million package aimed at bringing boarded-up and derelict buildings back into use across England.
The money is intended to tackle one of the most visible signs of decline in many British towns: empty shops, shuttered buildings and town-centre properties that have gradually become part of the landscape rather than places where people live, work or spend money.
The announcement on 25 September is specifically for England. Scotland has its own approach to town-centre regeneration because responsibility for most of these matters is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
But Scotland is not without funding.
The Scottish Government says its 2026-27 Budget includes £47 million for regeneration of communities and town centres, intended to strengthen local economies. This includes support for Business Improvement Districts and the Scotland Loves Local initiative.
So the question for Scotland is not whether there is money for regeneration. It is whether the Scottish approach is capable of producing the sort of visible change that many communities want to see.
What is England actually funding?
The £210 million English package is divided into several parts.
The largest element is a new £125 million Derelict Buildings Fund, which will help local authorities transform vacant buildings into facilities such as shared workspaces, cafés, health centres and community facilities.
A further £65 million is aimed at helping communities rescue and improve important local buildings and businesses at risk of closure, including pubs and sports clubs.
Another £20 million will be divided between High Street Rental Auctions, which are designed to tackle commercial properties that have been vacant for at least 12 months, and a new Co-operative Development Programme.
The idea is therefore broader than simply giving money to shopkeepers.
It is about changing the use of buildings, bringing empty property back into economic or community use and, where possible, giving local communities a greater stake in what happens to their high street.
The English Government says a full high streets strategy will follow later this year.
Scotland has taken a different route
Scotland's town-centre policy has been developing for considerably longer.
The Scottish Government and COSLA have a Town Centre First Principle, dating back to 2014, which is intended to put the health of town centres at the heart of public-sector decision-making.
The Scottish Government says town centres need to become more diverse, sustainable and useful as places to live, work and enjoy, rather than depending entirely on traditional retail.
That is an important change because the old model of a successful town centre was heavily dependent on shops.
Today a town centre might need housing, offices, cafés, leisure facilities, public services, community facilities, cultural activities and businesses as well as shops.
The Scottish Government's new Programme for Government 2026-31 says it will continue a strategic approach to regeneration, revitalise town centres, encourage town-centre living, tackle vacant and derelict land and support community ownership.
It also says it will continue to explore measures, including the non-domestic rates system, that could stimulate regeneration of Scottish high streets.
There is substantial regeneration funding
Scotland also has the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund, operated by the Scottish Government in partnership with COSLA.
In March, £36 million was announced for 32 projects across Scotland.
The Scottish Government says these projects are expected to support more than 1,200 jobs and 800 training opportunities while bringing 21 disused or derelict sites back into use.
The projects show how different the Scottish approach can be.
Money is going to projects including a creative hub at Granton Lighthouse in Edinburgh, an advanced manufacturing park on the Clyde and projects providing affordable homes in remote parts of the Highlands and Islands.
This is regeneration in a much broader sense than simply reopening empty shops.
What does this mean for the Highlands?
This is where the national comparison becomes particularly relevant to places such as Wick and Thurso.
Highland Council has access to Scottish regeneration programmes, and the latest Scottish funding round includes Highland projects.
But the money is not necessarily going directly into traditional high-street shop units.
For example, previous Regeneration Capital Grant funding included £602,500 for Glen Urquhart Public Hall. The latest round includes funding for projects involving affordable homes in remote Highland and island communities.
Highland Council also says the 2026-27 Regeneration Capital Grant Fund now incorporates funding previously delivered through the Vacant and Derelict Investment Programme.
That is significant because the problem facing smaller Highland towns is not simply empty retail units.
It can be empty upper floors, ageing public buildings, declining footfall, poor transport connections, a shortage of housing, changing shopping habits and the difficulty of attracting new businesses to relatively small markets.
Wick provides an example of another approach
Wick has already seen substantial investment in its town centre.
The Wick Street Design Project has involved improvements to Bridge Street and High Street, including wider footways, improved crossings, public spaces, planting, seating, lighting and changes to the pedestrian zone.
The project was funded through the Scottish Government's Active Travel Infrastructure Fund and has cost about £2.1 million.
There has also been smaller-scale regeneration funding through Highland Council's Place Based Initiative and Community Regeneration Fund.
In 2025, for example, £18,000 of Place Based Initiative funding was combined with £50,000 from the Council's Community Regeneration Fund for improvements around Wick Riverside and other town-centre work.
These are useful investments, but they illustrate the difference between improving a town centre and bringing empty buildings back into productive use.
The two things are related, but they are not the same.
And what about Thurso?
Thurso has a rather different opportunity developing.
Highland Council has committed £100 million to a Community Point of Delivery in the town as part of its £2.1 billion, 20-year Highland Investment Plan.
The proposed development is intended to bring education and other community facilities together, with possibilities including sport, leisure, health, arts, offices, innovation and services from organisations such as NHS Highland and UHI.
The council has also acknowledged that the potential regeneration of Thurso town centre needs to be considered alongside changes to public facilities and services.
This could eventually have a considerable effect on the town centre, but it is a different model again from England's new fund specifically aimed at vacant and derelict buildings.
The real question is what happens to empty buildings
There is perhaps a lesson here for Scotland.
Improving pavements, roads, public spaces and town-centre appearance can make a difference. So can new community hubs and public investment.
But an attractive town centre can still have empty shops.
The difficult part is often getting the buildings themselves back into use.
That may require dealing with complicated ownership, unrealistic property valuations, repair costs, planning restrictions, business rates, lack of demand and the simple economics of running a business in a small town.
England's new approach is interesting because it attempts to tackle some of the buildings themselves.
Scotland has many of the ingredients already, but they are spread across a number of different programmes.
Could Scotland learn anything from the English approach?
There is no need for Scotland simply to copy the English scheme.
Scotland's towns are different and the Scottish Government has chosen a broader regeneration model.
But the English announcement does raise a legitimate question.
Should Scotland have a clearly identifiable fund specifically aimed at bringing long-term vacant high-street buildings back into use?
That could mean shops becoming shops again, but it could also mean offices, homes, cafés, community facilities, health services, workshops or small business premises.
For towns such as Wick and Thurso, that broader approach could be important.
The future of the high street is unlikely to be about recreating the retail environment of 30 or 40 years ago. The challenge is to find useful new purposes for buildings that were designed for a different economy.
Scotland is already spending significant sums on regeneration. The Scottish Government's 2026 spending plans show £47 million a year for regeneration from 2027-28 onwards, compared with £35 million in the 2026-27 budget line, although the precise programmes and purposes differ from the English £210 million package.
So this is not a story about England spending money while Scotland does nothing.
It is a rather more interesting question.
Are the different approaches producing the sort of town centres that local people actually want?
For Caithness, the answer may depend less on the size of the national fund and more on whether national and Highland funding can be turned into occupied buildings, new businesses, homes and community facilities on the ground.
A new pavement can improve a high street.
A new building can improve it further.
But ultimately, a town centre needs people using its buildings.
A preent Wick in particular has many empty shops in the town centre so it remains to be seen if the funding available can acturally put life back and stop it becoming a ghost town.