Failure to adhere to lease terms is a dangerous strategy for tenants who wish to renew their leases.
A commercial tenant at Heathrow Airport, whose use of his business premises had been the subject of numerous enforcement notices because of breaches of planning regulations, received a notice from his landlord under Section 25 of the Landlord and Tenant Act terminating his tenancy and stating that the grant of a new tenancy would be opposed on the grounds of the tenant’s breaches of his obligations under the lease.
The tenant went to court to force the landlord to grant a new tenancy.
Since the breaches were mainly ones of planning regulations, which represented the continuing commission of criminal offences, the court had no difficulty in accepting the landlord’s argument that its opposition to the lease was justified.
