help with a very hishonest landloard

karawong

I am in commercial lease with a landlord who is very dishonest and keeps trying to cone me out of money by over claiming expenses and keeps forcing me to do improvement on his property even though the lease states I only need to maintain the cosmetic appearance inside the property. I am extremely stressed about dealing with him very time when I have to see him or speak to him as he is very aggressive. As a result, I am looking to sell my lease at a very low price to a potential buyer, yet he sends me a letter demanding the improvement to be done otherwise he will not agree on the assignment.

Before I took over the business premises (a chinese take away), the previous leaseholder told me that the landlord had the original gas certificate for both the flat above and the business premise below, so that I emailed the landlord and asked him to send me the copy, however, in his email he only attached the gas certificate for the flat above, but not the business premise below. he gave me an excuse that for some reason, he couldn't scan the document because his scanner wasn't working.....etc. I know I was very naive and believed in what he had said and this proved to be a huge mistake.
Just after several months in to my business, he demanded a gas certificate from me, saying I was not allowed to operate my business without one, then I asked him about the previous one, and he said he didn't have one and it's only my misunderstanding. therefore i was forced to obtain a gas certificate, it cost me more than a thousand pounds to get that done. But he didn't stop there, he kept over claiming money from me. For example, it only cost £500 for cleaning the extractor, but he told me it cost £800 and made excuses for us to pay the expense by cash rather than by other means. For anything we paid, we asked him for a receipt, but he said he had sent it in post. But I have never received them.

Because his honesty, I have soon kept all the email exchanges as well as voice recording everything we have agree and said later.

I was wondering if I can take legal action against him? probably on the ground of he tricked me into believing he had the gas certificate, but in fact he didn't and resulted me in paying the cost for one, as well as him over claiming money from me and force me to install an gas interlock system which in fact it's not required by law.

My question is what should I do? Where should i seek advice from ? I have not got much money to instruct a solicitor to do the work properly. On one hand, all I want is just to sell the shop cheap and quick. On the other hand, I want to take his landlord to court and so that he won't do that to other people.

In addition, I do not mind to surround the lease, although I bought it for 40 K.

Thank you very much for your time in reading this long articles and all your advice will be appreciated.

Kara