Articles

The English have a romantic attachment to ruins. Well, you may say, everyone does. But, while the French or Irish will happily picnic in a field overlooking a pile of collapsed stone and go home afterwards, only the English want to buy the rubble ...

As we have just seen in Euro 2024, there is the offside rule and the offside trap. The first is easy, but the second requires training and practice. Woe betide the lawyer who says, ‘It’s all a matter of common sense.’    Commercial Leases are...

At a rent review, the rent will either go up or it will stay the same. But it will not go down.  It is common for landlords to offer ‘starter rents’ – that is a temporary reduction in rent to get the tenant to sign – followed by a period at a h...

A rent holiday is an illusion. Its purpose is exactly the same as when a shop offer "no repayments for 12 months". All it does is postpone the date when you start paying for the occupation you have already enjoyed. It is not the holiday. It does n...

Generally, once a party issues proceedings the potential for an early settlement is dead. There are exceptions to this - sometimes it does require the issuing of legal proceedings in order for the other party to wake up. But generally, if there is...

A lease is not the product of two people in love who want to spend the rest of their lives together. It is a document drafted by the landlord’s lawyers with the aim of transferring as many burdens to the tenant as possible, without causing him to ...

Automatic renewal clauses exist in many office tenancies or office licences. An Automatic Renewal Clause puts the obligation to terminate on the licensee, even where the licence agreement is expressed to be for an initial fixed period. The conse...

Example: Mr Smith buys his property only afterwards to discover a public footpath across his back garden. If he had known of the footpath before he bought he would have offered less or not bought at all. What can he do? He has three options: ...

Trespass claims fall into two categories: Actual physical Infringement  Transitory Interference Actual physical Infringement Example: ‘Weekenders’ and ‘Cold Comfort’ are detached houses on adjoining plots. Cold Comfort gets planning permis...

Slander of Title is the law that covers untrue statements about another’s title to land. The law of Defamation has two branches: Libel, where the defamatory comment is in writing; and Slander where it is in transient form. In Slander the burden o...