Industry comment, updates and news from the Websters team.
In Read Smith‘s Real Estate Legal Update, it was noted that some of the highest profile corporate occupiers have on-going programmes for reducing power consumption and improving their impact on the environment but others may be persuaded by the costs savings or required by some of these new laws and regulations to turn green.
Read the full article here
Joanna Nicholls of Howes Percival has reported that, from 1 January 2015, it will be illegal to use the hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) gas R22 in either its newly produced ‘virgin’ or recycled form. R22 gas is a commonly used coolant in older air conditioning systems so its ban will have a significant impact as these systems will either have to be converted or replaced. The key question for landlords and tenants is who will pay?
Read the full article here
Anna Rutherford of Speechly Bircham notes that the Taking Control of Goods Regulations 2013 made on 26 July 2013 provide further detail on the Commercial Rent Arrears Recovery (CRAR) procedure which comes into force next April. There has been uncertainty and speculation concerning the new regime which replaces the existing law on seizure and sale of goods and the archaic law of distress. CRAR seeks to provide a unified procedure for enforcement agents to follow. Since the Regulations cover specific amounts of rent only, commercial Landlords might be advised to refrain from offering inclusive rents, without detailing separate sums for rent and service charge.
read more here
Peter Bolton King, the RICS Global Residential Director, reports that the RICS Service Charge Residential Management Code is in need of updating, as the current document is woefully out of date. RICS is intending to consult stakeholders next month about what revisions they would like to see in a 3rd edition and will also be asking respondents to assess the impact of any changes. Without a business impact assessment it is unlikely that any updated edition would be endorsed by the government.
Read the full article here
In February 2013, Russell-Coke posted a summary of the law relating to tenancy deposit protection. The recent Court of Appeal decision in Superstrike v Rodrigues has caused quite a stir. Ed Cracknell and Stephen Small summarise the consequences for landlords in light of both the case and subsequent guidance that has been jointly published by the deposit scheme providers.
Read the full article here
Practical Law notes that, in Blackpool Borough Council and others v Cargill [2013] UKUT 0377 (LC), the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) held that a landlord had not acted unreasonably pursuant to section 19 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 where it had recovered from each tenant the same amount in respect of a global management charge via the service charge.
Read the full article here
When we started specialising in service charge audits they were frequently undertaken as part of the property owner’s general annual audit. This was not a satisfactory situation because specialist knowledge is needed for accurate service charge accounting assessment. Some of the advantages of an audit are:-
Since that time many large landlords in the UK have moved to providing independent audited accounts for their service charges thus removing one cause of landlord / tenant conflict
An article in Inside Housing explains how Sutton Council corrected the service charge proportions in the leases of an estate, where some tenants had been paying slightly different amounts of service charge, which became critical when the social landlord proposed refurbishing the estate. Before the 1987 Landlord and Tenant Act, the only way to correct a mistake was if someone had acted fraudulently or where the document did not give effect to what the parties had intended. Part 4 of the Act now allows either a landlord or a leaseholder to apply to a leasehold valuation tribunal to correct such problems by varying the lease and this is what Sutton Council did successfully.
Read the full article here
Elisons has reported that, in Marks and Spencer plc v BNP Paribas Securities Services Trust Company (Jersey) Ltd and another [2013] EWHC 1279 (Ch), where the tenant exercised a break clause part-way through a quarter, having paid the rent for the full quarter, the High Court implied a term into the lease entitling the tenant to a repayment of the rent from the break date to the end of the quarter. This decision is a departure from the widely-accepted view that, in the absence of an express provision in the lease, a tenant will not be entitled to a refund of any rent paid that relates to the period after a break date.
Read the full article here
Speechly Bircham has reported that it is a virtual certainty that a new 15% top rate of SDLT for transfers of high-value UK residential property to companies and certain other entities will be incorporated into the Finance Act 2013 when it is passed this summer. As is commonly the case with Finance Act provisions, the provisions for the annual tax changes and extension of CGT will be back-dated to the preceding April, so in a sense the legislation is already in force.
Read the full article here
