Property
A 10-year renewal for the kitchen that supplies four cafés.
A café group with four sites and a central kitchen
Area
Led by
Instruction to result
Fee
, 2025
- InstructedLease ends 31 August 2025. Renewal wanted.
- Section 26 requestA new 10-year lease requested, from 1 September.
- Counter-noticeThe landlord does not oppose a new lease.
- Terms agreedRent, review and break clause settled.
- CompletedNew lease signed and dated by both parties.
New 10-year lease, tenant break at year 5, rent increases capped at 4% a year.
Demo matter. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
A café group with four sites in Bath and Bristol bakes everything in one production kitchen on an industrial estate. The kitchen’s lease was due to end on 31 August 2025, and the landlord’s agent had suggested a new lease at a much higher rent with a full repairing obligation that would have made the café group responsible for the roof. The kitchen had been fitted out at the group’s cost. Moving would have stopped all four cafés for weeks.
Thomas confirmed that the lease was protected by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, which meant the group had a right to a new lease unless the landlord could prove a statutory ground to refuse one. He served a section 26 request in the second week, which put the timetable in the tenant’s hands and fixed the earliest date the rent could change.
The landlord’s counter-notice confirmed it would not oppose a new lease, so the negotiation was about terms only. Thomas used a schedule of condition with photographs to limit the repairing obligation to the state of the building at the start of the lease. When the new lease could not be completed before the court deadline, both sides agreed in writing, before the deadline, to extend it, as the Act allows.
The new lease completed on 15 September 2025. It runs for 10 years with a tenant-only break at year 5, rent reviews linked to inflation but capped at 4% a year, and repairs limited by the schedule of condition. The rent the agent first proposed was not agreed. The café group has the renewal date for 2035 in its diary, with a reminder to call us 18 months before it.
We were told to accept the agent’s terms or start looking. Thomas showed us we had a right to renew.
Co-founder, the café group
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