Landlords and tenants of commercial property in England and Wales still trying to agree how to deal with arrears of rent built up because of COVID-19 will welcome an updated Code of Practice ‘Guidance: Commercial rent code of practice following the COVID-19 pandemic’ to help them negotiate a resolution.

Save for limited circumstances, on Friday 25 March 2022 the last Covid-19 restrictions that were brought in during March 2020 have been removed.

Whether you have a property portfolio or just a single residential property signing up to the Land Registry Property Alert service is something you should strongly consider. Property Alert is a free property monitoring service which helps to reduce the risk of property fraud. Once signed up the service will send you email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties allowing you take action if necessary.

The government has published a draft bill to deal with unpaid rent arrears that arose during the pandemic. Landlords and tenants that have been unable to reach agreement on rent arrears accrued during the pandemic, facing a binding arbitration process.

Head of Litigation at Ramsdens, Nick Armitage explains the current position on the recovery of commercial property due to rent arrears and also on the recovery of those rent arrears.

​The Court of Appeal has recently given a judgement on the contentious issue of the failure of a landlord to provide the tenant of an assured shorthold tenancy with a gas safety certificate before the tenant entered into the tenancy or indeed during the term where required.

It is easy to overlook the importance of the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in Lease transactions. Generally, parties are keen to get the Lease completed as soon as possible and, although it is a legal requirement that an EPC is made available when a property is marketed for sale or let, the commissioning of an EPC is often an afterthought or box ticking exercise.

Landlords, tenants and property professionals will welcome a new version of the Code for leasing business premises in England & Wales, published by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).