Commercial Lease Renewal Problem

vigman

Firstly, apologies if this is in the wrong subject area. Admins, please move if necessary

My wife owns and rents out a small restaurant and the lease is up for renewal. For years the tenants have been a nightmare. Apart from anything else they used to get friends and family to do 'professional' work resulting in us now having had a gas warning certificate issued by a catering Gas Safe certification company. There was already a fire warning document issued.
We don't want to renew the lease and know all the grounds for possession and the issues with clauses 25 and 26.
We know that they have to rectify the safety issues, but my question is what happens if the lease expires before they have done any rectification work please? Does it revert to my wife or does it renew for them?
I know they will promise to do the work but it always comes to nothing.
These are the bare bones of the story. The tenants have multiple companies with incorrect information (eg addresses that are not correct, and directors of firms with no capital etc) and have not even opened the restaurant since October, months before our gas warning certificate was issued or the current crisis.
They have paid the rent and we have suspicions on where that money comes from.
We just want them to go but they insist that they are offered a renewed lease. All our legal advice (and theirs) seems to favour them at every turn.
If anyone can offer advice I would be very interested.
TIA
Vigman

steampowered

It is difficult to advise without having a copy of the lease. The lease should stipulate what happens on expiry of the term, and what notices the parties need to serve to terminate. The first thing you should do is carefully read that document. 

As this is a commercial premises, you should note that the tenant may have a right to renew the lease under The Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, unless the proper process has been followed to disapply that Act. 

The lease will probably require the tenants to return the property in a decent state, but I doubt it will go into the sorts of specifics you are looking for.

davidmcn

vigman said:

Firstly, apologies if this is in the wrong subject area. Admins, please move if necessary

There isn't really a correct area here - it's primarily a website for consumer advice, not for commercial landlords. There might be other places better populated with people who can advise.

Though you say you've already had legal advice on this, so what's causing you to doubt it?

vigman

davidmcn said:

vigman said:

Firstly, apologies if this is in the wrong subject area. Admins, please move if necessary

There isn't really a correct area here - it's primarily a website for consumer advice, not for commercial landlords. There might be other places better populated with people who can advise.

Though you say you've already had legal advice on this, so what's causing you to doubt it?

Actually, the tenancy comes about from an incredibly complex estate settlement written about in many previous threads of mine and my wife became a commercial landlord through this process not choice.
We haven't had clear legal advice about what happens if the lease expires during a promise to correct all the legal and safety issues and hoped that someone here could clarify if they had experience of such matters.
TIA
Vigman

anselld

If the 1954 L&T Act is in force (which it is by default) then you need to serve a Section 25 notice opposing the Lease renewal...    https://www.netlawman.co.uk/ia/section-25-notice

If the 1954 Act has been disapplied correctly then renewal options are only as written in the Lease.  There is no additional statutory protection for the tenant.
 

bris

Commercial leases are all different and tailored to the circumstances of the let. You need to read the lease, or better still get a solicitor who deals with commercial leases to read it to find out what you need to do to bring the lease to an end. You need to get this right as there can be long notice terms in commercial leases. 

The lease will usually be a full insurance and repairing lease which mean the building must be in the same condition as it was when first let. So that should cover any safety issues with anything that was there at the start of the lease.

You need legal help so better to spend a few quid getting this right rather than thousands if you get it wrong.