A lease is a legal contract entered into, usually, by the owner of a property, known as the Landlord, with another person who is known as the Tenant, in relation to a particular property.

The Lease sets out the rights and responsibilities of both parties to the Lease, including the how long the Lease is to be for, what the property may be used as and how much rent is payable.

Tenants generally have numerous responsibilities and obligations in Leases, in addition to the obligation to pay rent. We can discuss and advise you on the main terms of the Lease and your responsibilities and obligations before you enter into the Lease. We can also assist you with negotiating the terms in the Lease so that they are more favourable to you and better suited to the needs of your business.

If you are taking a Lease of the whole of a property, then you will usually be responsible for the repair and maintenance of the whole property (this includes the structural parts of the property such as the roof, foundations etc).

In cases where there are a number of occupiers then you will usually only be responsible for repairing and maintaining the internal shell of the part of the property you are to take. In these circumstances it is usual for the Landlord to agree to carry out any repairs and maintenance to the structural parts of the building and then to recover his costs from the tenants of the building through a service charge payment.

Whether you are taking a Lease of the whole of a property or of part, the repairing obligations can be an expensive liability, particularly as the standard repairing clauses in a Lease usually require the Tenant to repair any defects at the property in question even if they were already present before the lease was entered into.

In addition, when the Lease comes to an end the Landlord may serve upon you a notice setting out all defects at the property if the property has not be left in a state of good repair and condition. In these circumstances you may be required to pay to the Landlord the sum of money which it would cost to repair the defects even though the lease has come to an end and you are no longer in the property.

There are a number of ways in which a Tenant’s repairing liability under a Lease can be limited and we will discuss these with you at the start of the transaction.

A Lease is usually entered into for a fixed period of time, for example, 5 years. However, there are mechanisms which may be available to you to bring the lease to an end earlier should your requirements change and this is something which we can discuss with you at the beginning of the transaction.

Usually, the answer is no as business Leases in most cases enjoy protection by law which means that the Lease automatically continues after the end of the fixed period (unless the Tenant has left the property before the end of the lease) until either the Tenant or the Landlord takes steps to end the Lease by serving a legal notice on the other party. In either case the Tenant usually has a legal right to a new Lease and there are only limited grounds upon which the Landlord can refuse to grant a new Lease.

In some circumstances Leases do not have this legal protection which means that the Tenant would have to leave the property when the lease comes to an end if the Landlord was not willing to grant a new Lease.

We can advise both Landlords and Tenants in connection with the legal protection for Leases and the options available to best suit your business requirements.