This is a practitioner’s book which covers situations where a landlord is giving (or not giving) consent under a covenant in a lease.
There are five parts.
The first part is on ‘restrictions on alienation- ‘alienation’ being the right (or not) of a tenant to dispose of his lease/tenancy – whether this is to assign it, grant a sublease, charge it or part possession with it.
At common law, tenants have a basic freedom to dispose of their lease, but this right is frequently curtailed by statute or by the terms of the lease itself.
So if you have any sort of question about the various permutations of alienation and the different rules which apply to different types of leases, tenants and circumstances – this is your book.
The second part is on restrictions on alterations and improvements.
This is considerably shorter than the first section and covers just four issues:
- Restrictions on the tenant’s freedom to alter
- The impact of statute
- Unreasonable withholding of consent, and
- Estoppel
The third part is on restrictions on the tenants ‘use’ of the premises. So under the basic law, tenants can do what they like, but often there is something preventing this. For example
- The tenants’ lease/tenancy agreement
- Statute (for example, the planning regulations), or
- Some sort of restrictive or other covenant
The fourth part looks at contracts and consents. What the parties have agreed to and what consents are required to overcome any restrictions. And what tenants need to do to obtain any necessary consent.
The fifth and final part looks at litigation – i.e. if the parties are unable to reach an agreement and need to have issues decided in a court. Although, as usual in any litigation situation, some form of dispute resolution process will always be preferable. But if litigation is necessary, the book contains some useful precedents.
Thankfully my litigation days are long past, but I know that when I did property litigation work, a book such as this would have been enormously helpful. So a very useful book to have on any property practitioner’s bookshelf.
The book can be purchased from Bloomsbury at a discounted rate of £135 in hardback or £108 for the ebook. Or rather more expensively from Amazon.