Can a guarantor guarantee an AGA?

That question? Again? Well, as predicted, it appears that this current recession is going to give us an answer to the question, and the answer, in the very well reasoned decision of Mr Justice Newey, in the case of Good Harvest Partnership LLP v Centaur Services Ltd [2010] EWHC 330 (Ch) - a Chancery Division application for summary judgment - is that a guarantor is released from liability upon a lawful assignment of a post-1995 Act lease, and that an attempt to prolong the guarantor's liability (e.g. by requiring the guarantor to guarantee the AGA, or to guarantee the incoming assignee) is rendered void by the anti-avoidance provisions of section 25 of the 1995 Act. Such an attempt would frustrate the guarantor's release under section 24 of the 1995 Act. Since this question first arose, the safest advice to a landlord client has been that the "double-decker" guarantee just might not work. No doubt this "obviously correct" (careful) decision of the High Court will be appealed, so that the Court of Appeal can get their teeth into it. But in the meantime, the implications of it will be considered in detail in the CPI Update to be published this weekend.