£26M Saved for Retail and Leisure Occupiers: What's Next in 2025
As we bid farewell to 2024 and welcome 2025, it’s a perfect moment to reflect on our achievements over the past year and anticipate what’s ahead.
The Retail and Leisure team at Assure have had another outstanding year, saving our clients a remarkable £26 million. These savings stem from a variety of challenges, including identifying charging errors, scrutinising budget expenditures, and ensuring caps are correctly applied. Our team has meticulously examined the numbers and lease terms to uncover these savings.
In 2024, we witnessed significant increases in service charge budgets across retail parks and shopping centres, primarily driven by rising staff costs and major works. We anticipate these factors will continue to drive cost increases into 2025.
As of now, 40% of retail park budgets with a December 2025YE have been submitted for review and only 16% of shopping centre budgets. The reason for the delay in timely budget submissions is unclear, but the unexpected rise in employer costs introduced by the Labour Government Budget is likely to be a contributing factor, leading to hastily revised expenditure plans. Early indications suggest increases of an average 6-7.5%, surpassing inflation once again.
In the coming year, we will be challenging managing agents to explore innovative ways to mitigate these cost increases, whether through increased use of technology, incentivised facilities management contracts, or detailed scrutiny of project work proposals.
Our review of the 2025YE budgets in the Assure Index will be available in the coming weeks.
We’ve also received numerous new business inquiries from occupiers eager to reduce their property costs in 2025. Many of these inquiries come from personal referrals, so we want to extend our heartfelt thanks for your recommendations!
If you’re looking to reduce your property costs in 2025, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Let’s make 2025 another successful year together!
Assure Consulting is the UK’s leading professional service charge & lease expense consultancy. Offering a unique occupier-focused approach to generate significant property cost savings for large corporate occupiers. In 2024, we generated savings of £46M for occupiers across the UK and Internationally. To learn more about the services we provide and how we can support your business, complete the contact form below.