The Government is to invest £3m to tackle the negative impact that empty shops are having on the high street in 57 of the hardest hit areas.

Communities Secretary John Denham today announced the cash will be used to find creative ways to use their empty shops and re-open them as community facilities.

Each council will receive a grant of more than £50,000 to allocate to ideas to lift town centres and transform empty shops into meeting places, learning centres or showrooms for local artists.

The funding is intended to overcome the dent on business and consumer confidence that boarded up empty shops are perceived to have.

John Denham said: ‘We know that the downturn has really hurt high streets in areas of high deprivation across England. These grants will help to transform and re-open empty shops as part of our real help to keep town centres vibrant and combat the recession.

‘Those councils will now be able to use our funding to come up with their own creative ideas to transform their boarded up shops into something useful like a learning centre, meeting place for local people or showroom for local artists.

‘There is no need to see unused shops on our high streets going to waste, especially when we know that it doesn’t take a lot to turn a vacant shop into something beneficial for the community.’

The funding follows changes to the planning rules to make it easier to use vacant shops for a range of other purposes and has introduced special temporary community leases called ‘meanwhile uses’ that allow local groups to temporarily use a vacant property rent free while the landlord seeks a permanent new business.

This means the landlord reduces his property bills costs and that the building is maintained.