Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has considered reforms to commercial tenancy registration and landlord transparency as part of its work to tackle organised crime on the high street.

The Government is cracking down on company directors who abuse the system with the Abusive Phoenixism Taskforce announced in the November 2025 Budget. The Insolvency Service, Companies House and HMRC are working in partnership to identify and act against directors who use successive companies to avoid debts and sanctions, ensuring they cannot resurface and continue trading under new entities. We are also reforming Companies House, with new mandatory identity verification for directors, tighter controls on who can file company information, and enhanced data-sharing will help to identify and act on criminals including those abusing our high streets.

As part of the work of the High Street Organised Crime Unit we are exploring options to make it harder for criminal enterprises to set up on the high street. This includes considering the role of landlords, who are uniquely placed to help in the prevention and detection of crime, whilst recognising that in some cases, landlords might be complicit in high street illegality.