Three quarters of commercial landlords say budget pressures are preventing them from putting the vacant-property security measures they would like in place, according to new research, as the majority also expect risks around empty buildings to worsen.
The findings come from a survey of 350 UK commercial property owners commissioned by vacant-property security specialist SafeSite Facilities and carried out by Censuswide.
When asked how often security costs prevented them from delivering their preferred level of protection, 28% said always and 47% said often. A further 23% said sometimes, 2% rarely, and none said never. Combined, 98% of respondents said costs had constrained their security decisions to some degree.
"These statistics are worrying because empty properties that are left without adequate security are prone to multiple risks," said Paul Goossens, operations director at SafeSite Facilities (pictured).
"These range from trespass to vandalism, burglary or theft, squatting, arson and fly tipping. There can also be health and safety risks, including children gaining access to sites which may have a range of dangers they are unaware of. But having adequate security measures in place for empty commercial property remains crucial."
The scale of the issue is substantial. Government figures from May 2026 record 2.1 million rateable non-domestic properties in England and Wales, broken down across retail (512,000), industrial (566,240), offices (428,270) and other uses (631,250). Applying Knight Frank's reported national retail vacancy rate of 13.5% to the retail figure alone points to around 70,000 empty retail properties; across all commercial categories, the total could be closer to 300,000.
Those numbers come at a time when high street vacancy in particular has attracted sustained media and political attention.
Looking ahead, the commercial landlords surveyed by SafeSite expect conditions to deteriorate. Asked whether they expected risks associated with vacant commercial property to increase or decrease over the next two years, 83% said they would rise. The full breakdown:
- Increase significantly: 36.6%
- Increase somewhat: 46.9%
- Stay about the same: 13.7%
- Decrease somewhat: 2.3%
- Decrease significantly: 0.6%
"With risks and costs rising at the same time, it is clearly a complex picture," Goossens added.
"Vacant properties by their nature are not generating revenue so every expenditure has to be justified. But there is hope for commercial property owners and landlords with new technology emerging all the time.
"AI-enabled CCTV, for instance, can reduce reliance on human guarding on some sites by providing intelligent filtering of threats and an ability to alert security guards when human intervention is required. If costs are becoming prohibitive, commercial property owners need to be more strategic in the way they spend their security budget and seek professional advice on how to reduce costs."
