In the US, someone involved in some kind of money laundering task force explained to me that a lot of those short lived stores are used to launder money and other money related operations. Lots of barbershops for example had the only same 5 people all day long talking smoking and occasionally getting cuts yet the store was making as much revenue as a high frequentation store...

UK gov, councils and police are all well aware. It's been exposed multiple times by reputable media outlets

Police don't care enough (or are told to do just enough to keep some of the public happy) and the government likes the income taxes from the "employees" and the council likes the business rates...

It's corrupt as hell