Richard Hugill

In March 2023, the Law Commission announced that it will review the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (the Act). The mainspring of the Act is security of tenure: the right for eligible commercial tenants to remain in their premises. The Act was introduced...

Unsurprisingly, the restrictions on forfeiture of business tenancies for non-payment of rent are to continue in England until 30 June 2021 - but what is likely to happen after that? Central government are likely to want to avoid an abrupt cliff-edge...

In my 20 May blog post I looked at the options potentially available to commercial landlords when dealing with tenants who were already in default prior to the enforced closure of businesses brought about by Covid-19. In this post, I address two...

The current Covid-19 crisis has prompted some commercial tenants to request temporary variations to their rent. We have previously highlighted some of the options open to both commercial landlords and tenants in reaching a negotiated agreement . However,...

We are posting a series of articles providing practical answers to questions raised recently with us. One such question is whether you can and should recover debts from other businesses also affected by the coronavirus crisis. The answer is...

If you run a business, you will be having to respond on many different fronts to the challenges of the lockdown. But how do we respond to bad debt? The answer is be proactive, review your debtors, maintain your cash flow and, in doing so, give your...

If you are the landlord of commercial premises, there are situations where you will want to terminate a current tenancy at or following the end of a contractual term, even if your tenant is reliable and is not defaulting on rent or other obligations. For...

From 1st October 2017, businesses seeking to recover debts from individuals are subject to the new ‘Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims’. Failing to follow the Protocol, or getting it wrong, may prove to be an expensive mistake. The Protocol...