repairs
Under a standard commercial lease, landlords usually want tenants to take on the lion’s share of responsibility for repairing and renewing commercial properties. Typically, this may include:
- repairs resulting from design defects in the building (for example, damage from subsidence caused by insufficient foundations)
- repairs which bring the building up to a higher condition than may have existed at the start of the lease
- major improvements required by Acts of Parliament passed since the lease first started
- at the end of the lease, replacement of lifts, air conditioning and other equipment, even where these items function properly
As these examples show, a tenant’s repairing obligation under a commercial lease can be very onerous and very expensive – amounting to tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds’ liabilities.
Tenants should take professional advice from commercial property solicitors experienced in negotiating the terms of commercial leases. They will save money in the long run by doing so. There are some easy ways in which a business can avoid the worst excesses of a repairing obligation, even where that business is taking over an existing lease. Some of these ways include:
- negotiating hard and insisting on restrictions to the tenant’s repairing obligation
- restricting the area you want to lease (for instance, by excluding parts of a building in serious disrepair or expensive component parts of a building such as a lift)
- taking a sub-lease rather than a lease of the property
- documenting the condition of repair of the building at the start of the lease/date when the business takes over the lease