Tenant’s failings meant lease was not validly terminated

When terminating a lease it is important to make sure you have fulfilled all your legal obligations. Failure to meet a single condition could result in the termination being invalid, as illustrated in a recent case before the High Court.

The case involved a second hand car business which had entered into a lease for a plot of land in 2005. The local authority allowed the plot to be used for car sales and repairs as long as certain conditions were met.

One of the conditions was that the local authority would be provided with details of a turning area for delivery vehicles.

Three years later the local authority served a breach of condition notice on the car business because it had failed to provide the required information.

The car business decided it was not viable to provide a turning area and so wrote to the landlord to terminate the lease. The landlord objected and said that the business had failed to fulfil all the obligations of the contract.

The court held that the landlord had failed to prove a number of alleged breaches of the lease by the car company such erecting a workshop without the landlord’s consent, keeping livestock on the site and failing to comply with numerous requirements involving decorating and repairs.

However, the court held that the car business had failed to keep the fencing in good repair and failed to show that the landlord consented to this.

The judge said that its failure to repair the fence meant that it had not met all its legal obligations and therefore the lease had not been terminated.

Please contact Nick Evans for more information about the issues raised in this article or any aspect of commercial property law.