Tenants Guide to Leasing Commercial Property

Our Standard Lease

When do I have to pay rent?

This depends on the terms and conditions of your lease. Normally, you will pay your rent every 3 months for the coming 3 months. Your payments will be due on 25 March, 24 June, 29 September and 25 December each year.

Our Income Team will invoice you for your rent. You should contact them direct if you would like to discuss payment arrangements.

Will my rent increase during the course of the lease?

This depends on the length of your lease and its particular terms and conditions. If you take a lease of up to 5 years, your rent is likely to stay the same throughout the period of the lease. If your lease is for 6 years or more, we will review your rent at certain times during the lease. These are known as rent reviews.

As with all property values, the rental value of business properties changes over time. Rent reviews give us an opportunity to make sure that the rent we are charging is the 'market' level at that time.

However, we will not automatically increase your rent. The rent review is an opportunity for both you and us to negotiate an agreement, and we recommend that you ask a chartered surveyor to act on your behalf.

We will start the rent review by issuing you a notice setting out our opinion of the current rental value. We reach this opinion using our knowledge of rental values for similar properties in the local area. And, as we have already said, a professional valuer is likely to be a great help to you at this point.

However, there are time limits that you will need to meet. If you are unable to reach an agreement with us, we will refer the rent review to an independent third party to settle.