Where a lease is granted for seven years, do the parties need to appoint solicitors to act on their behalf? There is no rule that the landlord and tenant must appoint solicitors in order to grant and take a lease. The parties are free to decide not to seek legal representation. However, a lease for a term of more than seven years must be registered at HM Land Registry by the tenant and the tenant is likely to require a solicitor for this purpose at least. Where the lease is not registrable in its own right, any easements granted by that lease must be registered in order to take effect at

Initiation The initiation point will largely depend on the terms of the lease as you have identified and there are no implied statutory provisions relating to the same. The rent review clause should in normal circumstances state who can initiate the review process; it will usually be either the landlord alone or both parties. Some leases do not require a formal procedure to be followed and merely need one party to write to the other initiating the review. The lease may provide that the rent should be determined as soon as possible. Alternatively, more stringent requirements are usually imposed such as the form of notice or counter-notice to be used, as well as time limits for service, however, from the question

What are the principles regarding ownership of airspace? In Lejonvarn v Cromwell Mansions Management Company Ltd [2011] EWHC 3838 (Ch), the High Court observed that the legal presumption that a conveyance of land carries with it the air space above and the soil below cannot be applied generally in the case of leases and must depend on looking at the particular circumstances of the lease within the context of the whole property from which that leasehold has been carved out. Generally, the accepted position is that there is no presumption in any lease of or including a roof that it extends upwards to the full height of the airspace available to the lessor, see: Rosebery Ltd v Rocklee Ltd. In H Waites Ltd v Hambledon Court Ltd, the court recommended approaching the issue on the basis that there is no presumption either way as to whether a lease of a part of

In some ways, the answer to the question posed depends upon whether: • the extension of the term of the lease is to take immediate effect between the parties upon conclusion of the agreement to extend and submit a revised plan; or • whether the extension of the term of the lease is to commence on a future date after the conclusion of such an agreement Where the extension takes immediate effect Where the extension takes immediate effect the tenants are taken, as a matter of law, to have surrendered their original lease immediately before the new one commences. The surrender by operation of law is based on the doctrine of estoppel. The extension and new plan is

See Practice Note: Formalities where an overseas company is buying, selling

It is common in leases where the tenant has the right to place equipment on a particular location for the parties to insert a ‘lift and shift’ provision, by which the landlord can require the tenant to remove them and place them elsewhere. Depending upon the construction of the agreement this might in fact amount to an easement, but it assumed that the parties here intend that exclusive possession be granted of a new location under a new lease once the landlord has exercised the provision. The starting point is that the protection of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (LTA 1954) will apply to any lease where the tenant occupies premises for the purposes of a business carried on by him or by a

By operation of law, certain variations to the terms of a lease by way of a deed of variation can amount to a surrender and regrant of the lease, even if this is not what the parties in fact intended. The effect of a deemed surrender and regrant can potentially be extremely problematic for the landlord. In particular, if the lease is contracted out of the operation of Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, on a deemed surrender and regrant this will no longer be the case. Additionally, there may be difficulties

The instruction in paragraph 13 of Schedule 17A to the Finance Act 2003 (FA 2003), that the lease variation is treated as the grant of a new lease, means that a stamp duty land tax (SDLT) return must be submitted as if a new lease had been granted. The term of this (deemed) lease is the unexpired term of the varied lease and the amount of rent payable under the lease is the difference between the amount of the rent payable under the varied lease before and after the variation. In other words, tax is

The interpretation of the terms of a lease are always a matter of construing the document as a whole, in the light of the admissible background facts. See Practice Note: Contract interpretation—the guiding principles. The ordinary rules of construction apply, although the court leans towards a strict interpretation of a forfeiture clause. See Commentary: Construction of the proviso for re-entry: Hill and Redman's Law of Landlord and Tenant [4609]. Subject to that caveat, it appears unlikely that a lease which gives the landlord the right to forfeit if the tenant is 'wound up' would be held to apply on

The current effect of the assumed demise is that the tenant has exclusive possession of the demised premises (subject to the terms of the lease). Absent any contractual right in the landlord’s favour arising out of the lease, the landlord is not entitled to agree to, nor can it compel the tenant to accept, attachment of the advertising board to the building. The tenant’s consent will be required. If part of the building is removed from the demise, this will almost certainly

A sub-tenancy is a tenancy created out of the headlease and will ordinarily mean that there is no privity of contract between the subtenant and the freeholder. It is well-established following the line of authorities approving the Court of Appeal decision in Pennell v Payne that determination of the headlease by notice also determines a sublease (see, for example, the decision of the House of Lords in Barrett v Morgan. The determination of the headlease would also mean that a sub-licence would be terminated. PW & Co v Milton Gate Investments Ltd noted that a lease creates an interest in land, and where the tenant

This Q&A considers the SDLT or LTT consequences of a ‘growing lease’ where the lease was originally granted over Welsh land when SDLT was payable but has been held over after 1 April 2018. For the purposes of this question, it has been assumed that SDLT was in fact paid on the grant