Landmark arbitration award under the UK Coronavirus Commercial Rent Arrears scheme

13 July, 2022
Rent arrears at a retailer’s HQ are not a protected rent debt: landmark arbitration award under the UK Coronavirus Commercial Rent Arrears scheme as deadline looms closer A statutory arbitration scheme for the resolution of commercial rent arrears that accrued during periods of government mandated closures in response to the pandemic came into force on … Read more

UK developers/landlords – always avoid uncertainty of undocumented occupation

27 June, 2022
We’ll paint a scene for you: a multi-let building is ripe for redevelopment and the developer/landlord is working towards obtaining possession of the various parts and terminating any rights that will interfere with the development. It knows that one tenant has a lease, contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (the 1954 Act) to … Read more

Clarity on contracting-out

13 June, 2022
The process for contracting-out a new tenancy of business premises from the statutory right to renew under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (the 1954 Act) is a key one for all landlords, and especially developers. Commonly, pre‑lettings are negotiated even before ground is broken on a site. Certainty that all those lettings are properly … Read more

Energy efficiency in commercial buildings

01 June, 2022
Energy performance of commercial buildings is a key element in the government’s drive both to reduce the UK’s emissions in the push towards net zero emissions by 2050 and to tackle inefficient energy use. Faced with statistics highlighting the disproportionate contribution of non-domestic buildings to emissions the government has for some time been introducing more … Read more

Building Safety Act 2022 – which provisions made the cut?

25 May, 2022
The Building Safety Bill has finally finished its legislative journey. On 28 April 2022 it was granted Royal Assent, thereby becoming the Building Safety Act 2022 (the Act). Given the size of the Act, it’s no surprise that it took a few days to work out which of the many proposed amendments to the Bill … Read more

Leasehold Reform: Ground Rent Bill gains Royal Assent

15 February, 2022
In just over a year since it was announced by the Government, on 8 February 2022, the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill received Royal Assent from Her Majesty the Queen. We first wrote about the Bill in January 2021 and how it proposed to limit the ground rent chargeable on most new long residential leases … Read more

The changing face of leasehold ownership

03 February, 2022
You will recall from our previous blogs on the topic of the reform of the leasehold system (that can be found here and here) that the government is keen to implement the recommendations of the Law Commission and make changes that will have a lasting benefit for leaseholders. The first of these reforms to take … Read more