News

How much service charge does a tenant pay in the year of a break?

Friends Life Management Services Ltd v A & A Express Building Ltd [2014] EWHC 1463 (Ch) is a complicated service charge accounting dispute, but it should serve as a warning to landlords and tenants of the need to consider how service charge accounting should apply when a lease comes to an end in the middle of a service charge accounting year. The analysis of the lease by the court may be instructive in other cases of disputed liability after termination.

Facts

The tenant had a 15 year lease running from March 1998, but it ended its lease early on 24 March 2010 by […]

Insurance clauses for rack rent leases

The City of London Law Society (Land Law Committee) has published on its website a new set of insurance provisions for a rack rent lease of commercial property. Specimen insurance clauses have been available on the CoLLS website since about 2005 when clauses were first introduced to address, in particular, the problems associated with uninsured damage. The new insurance provisions are not an update on the previous version, but a redraft, and are worth a detailed analysis. 

The new City of London Law Society clauses include some useful features which others may wish to incorporate into their own provisions. For example:

Warranties on […]

Property webinars for June: commercial property insurance; auction sales

Two more property webinars are lined up for June 2014. They are “Commercial Property Insurance Issues” (on 2 June 2014, at 12.30pm) which will include an analysis of the recently published City of London Insurance Clauses, common lease and contract drafting issues, and relevant standard conditions of sale; and “Buying and Selling at Auction” (on 9 June 2014, at 12.30pm). To enquire further about joining a webinar, please use the contact button above. Find out more about Property PSL webinars at http://propertypsl.co.uk/cpd-seminar-faq 

Is CRL insurance still required?

Post-October 2013, practitioners still obtain chancel repair screening reports, are still consider the need to obtain chancel repair insurance policies, and, when acting for mortgagees, are still requiring borrowers’ solicitors to do the same. At a property conference recently, a search provider’s agent gleefully told the delegates: “Chancel repair searches? You still need them, you know”.

Why is this so? Part of the continuing concern is the Land Registry’s strictly administrative approach to dealing with applications from Parochial Church Councils (PCCs) to register chancel repair liability (CRL), which involves accepting the PCCs UN1 application, seemingly without enquiry as to whether the […]

Capital allowances – Law Society Practice Note

The Law Society has published on its website a practice note: “Capital allowances: new pooling requirements”. It advises that “Commercial property lawyers and tax specialists dealing with the sale or purchase of property containing plant and machinery should read this practice note.”

The practice note runs through the changes outlined above that are being introduced to capital allowances legislation where a change of ownership occurs, and advises that solicitors, whether acting for seller or buyer, should raise the issue of allowances with the client as early as possible. “Failing to do so could result in delays or financial loss to your […]

Break right problems continue to dog tenants

To the displeasure of the tenant, in Marks And Spencer Plc v BNP Paribas Securities Services Trust Company (Jersey) Ltd & Anor [2014] EWCA Civ 603, the Court of Appeal has overturned the High Court’s decision and has obliged the tenant to repay to the landlord a rent refund (which had initially been ordered to be refunded to the tenant) representing rent paid in advance for the period between the break date of the lease and the end of the quarter in which the break occurred. The High Court had implied a term requiring the landlord to refund the “overpayment”. […]

Criminal trespassing does not preclude adverse possession

Contrary to the Land Registry’s originally expressed opinion, it seems that the criminal offence of squatting in a residential building (under section 144(1) of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012) does not preclude the offending period of occupation being taken into account in an adverse possession claim. This is according to Mr Justice Ouseley in a well-reasoned decision in Best v The Chief Land Registrar & Anor [2014] EWHC 1370 (Admin).

Coventry v Lawrence – nuisance, injunctions and damages

The Supreme Court decision in case of Coventry v Lawrence  [2014] UKSC 13 is likely to have ramifications in property disputes beyond the immediate subject matter of the case.

Facts of the case

The case involved proceedings brought against the owners of a motor sports stadium and track claiming that noise generated by the stadium and track amounted to a private nuisance. Since the 1970s, the track at Mildenhall Stadium had been used variously for speedway racing, stock-car rallies, banger racing and greyhound racing. From 1993, the track had been used for motocross. Over time, the activities had obtained the benefit of various […]

The Right to Contest

A process known as the Public Request to Order Disposal of land (PROD) has existed for some time under Part X of the Local Government Planning and Land Act 1980. It is currently referred to in Government publications as the Community Right to Reclaim Land. It allows anyone to request that land owned by a public body is put up for sale on the open market. The statutory request procedure applies to public bodies identified in Schedule 16 of the 1980 Act. Under Part X of the Act, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has powers […]

Understanding and dealing with title defects

A property webinar by Alan Riley: Wednesday 15 January 2014 (12.30pm to 2.00pm):

Understanding and dealing with title defects.
This webinar will analyse the process of title investigation and will cause us to remember some of those long lost or forgotten points on title investigation, including:
•What to look out for when investigating unregistered titles;
•How to deal with Land Charges search certificates;
•Problems arising on death: sole owners, co-owners, trustees and personal representatives;
•Sales by mortgagees (and title devolution through mortgagees);
•Sales by attorneys, and the evidence of title required;
•Dealing with different classes of title, and the upgrading of […]

Property and registration fraud

Land Registry is current running a survey on its website to find out customer views in relation to the collection of personal data for fraud prevention purposes: see Land Registry’s Fraud Survey. There is scope within the survey to provide suggestions to the Land Registry on how to minimise fraud (e.g. consider providing pin number identification systems for registered proprietors?). It is perhaps better not to suggest the re-introduction of paper land certificates.

Fraud is also the topic of Monday’s webinar: “Applying best conveyancing practice to avoid inadvertent liability for fraud”. This webinar considers how to stay alert to the possibility […]

Property webinar – Friday 8 November: Ensuring binding contracts and effective completions

Property webinar.
Friday 8 November at 12.30pm.
Ensuring binding contracts and effective completions.

The webinar will cover the following issues:.
– Who signs a contract for the sale of land, and how? What is a “signature”? What is a “contract”? – – Are agents sufficiently authorised to sign?
– Can faxes and PDF pages short-cut the route to effective exchange? What if the contract is altered after signature, or after exchange?
– How do you ensure the exchange is fully effective?
– What is execution, and who should execute? Can a deed be altered after execution, or after delivery? What […]

Chancel repair liability and mortgagees

As is widely known, at midnight on 12 October 2013, certain classes of property rights, such as chancel repair liability (CRL) lose their status as overriding interests under provisions of the Land Registration Act 2002. Once the status of the right as an overriding interest is lost, a purchaser of the land for valuable consideration will be able to take free from it. However, the loss of overriding interest status for a property right does not mean that the right ceases to be an interest. Where no disposition for value occurs after 12 October 2013, the land remains subject to […]

Overage in property transactions: webinar

Wednesday, 14 August 2013, starting time: 12:30pm.

Issues covered by this webinar will include:
– The property law devices used to protect overage clauses.
– Examples of overage errors arising from recent cases (including Cosmichome Ltd v Southampton City Council [2013] EWHC 1378 (Ch); Hildron Finance Ltd v Sunley Holdings Ltd [2010] EWHC 1681 (Ch); Renewal Leeds Limited v Lowry Properties Limited [2010] EWHC 2902; Berkeley Group plc v Pullen [2007] EWHC 1330 (Ch); Micro Design Group Ltd v BDW Trading Ltd [2008] EWCA Civ 448; Johnson v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2007] EWHC 1839 (Admin); Re […]

Registration of rentcharges at Companies House

In the law of unintended consequences, one door closes and another opens.

The Companies Act 2006 (Amendment of Part 25) Regulations 2013, which introduced a new Part 25 to the Companies Act 2006, have removed the requirement for registration at Companies House of charges created in rent deposit deeds. Under new rules applicable from 6 April 2013, all charges created by companies and LLPs are registrable unless expressly excluded by section 859A(6) of the Companies Act 2006. Section 859A(6)(a) excludes from the registration requirement “a charge in favour of a landlord on a cash deposit given as a security in connection […]

Law Commission – consultation on possible areas for reform

What areas of law does the Law Commission consider may benefit from reform, and could therefore be part of its 12th programme of law reform?

In landlord and tenant, they include:
– Concerns about the scope of Authorised Guarantee Agreements under the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995, following the Court of Appeal’s decision in K/S Victoria Street v House of Fraser [2011] EWCA Civ 904, in which the court confirmed that a “direct guarantee” was not permitted under the Act.
– Residual problems with the rule that a lease must have a certain term, in light of the Supreme Court’s […]

Registering sub-sale transfers – new rules

Following the commencement of The Finance Act 2013, and the new SDLT rules affecting pre-completion transactions (i.e. assignments and sub-sales) HMRC has issued guidance, for land registration purposes, on what evidence of SDLT compliance needs to be submitted to the Land Registry where a sub-buyer has two transfers to register (A to B, and B to C).

According to paragraph 2.21 of HMRC’s guidance on the SDLT pre-completion transactions rules, the sub-buyer (C) only needs to produce its own SDLT 5 with its application for registration of the transfers from A to B and B to C. The sub-buyer should […]

Finance Act 2013

The Finance Act 2013 received Royal Assent on 17 July 2013. The Act includes significant SDLT changes including new rules affecting sub-sales and assignments of contracts, new provisions relating to tenants who hold-over after contractual expiry, a new treatment for substantially performed agreements for lease, and the abolition of the abnormal rent increase rules. Further exemptions from the 15% SDLT rate for “higher threshold interests” in residential property are also introduced.

HMRC has published guidance on the new rules affecting sub-sales and assignments of contracts, now referred to as pre-completion transactions. See Guidance on the SDLT pre-completion transactions rules on […]