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Sandra Halliday Published
December 27, 2025
The Labour party in the UK has vowed to crack down on so-called American candy stores on British high streets if it wins the general election, as expected, which may happen as soon as next spring.
The party has also urged the current conservative government to focus more resources on restoring high streets.
Labour said it would work with councils on the project and make high streets more attractive to legitimate businesses.
And it wants a “new shops bonus” for any such legitimate business that opens a new location on a shopping street, with a focus initially on the West End of London's Oxford Street.
It aims for a three-month business rates ‘holiday’ in the first year of a company moving to new premises. It would be funded using money that currently goes to landlords to alleviate the issue of empty properties.
Candy stores have blighted the street in recent years and were particularly prevalent in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns, which saw a number of major names going under or deciding to close physical shops.
This resulted in a huge number of empty properties with some landlords renting the space to anyone prepared to pay for it, while others discovered that the businesses to which they'd let the stores had rented it to others and the tenants weren't what they expected.
While major London landlord GPE recently told Fashionnetwork.com that the peak of the problem had passed and that the intensive development in the West End would see candy store numbers declining rapidly, there are still plenty of them to be seen for now.
One report said there are more than 20 US-themed sweet shops open on Oxford Street at present.
Criticism of them has included their low-quality design, poor-quality (and potentially dangerous) products, obscure ownership structure that means they don’t pay business taxes, and concerns that they may be fronts for money laundering.
The UK government says it has “some of the strongest controls” globally against money laundering. But Labour said that it “would replace business rates with a new system, and use powers in the Economic Crime Act to crack down on rip-off businesses and make sure there are proper checks in place when companies are being set up”.