COVID-19: New Protections For Commercial Tenants – Are Tenants Now ‘Safe’?

By Milan Patel

01.05.2020

The UK Government has recently announced further steps to protect commercial tenants from aggressive rent collection by landlords including a ban the use of statutory demands and winding up orders where a company cannot pay their bills due to COVID-19 and preventing landlords from using commercial rent arrears recovery (CRAR) unless 90 days or more of rent is unpaid.  These measures support the existing ban on landlords evicting commercial tenants.  All of these measures will remain in effect until at least 30 June 2020.

Does that mean commercial tenants can now relax?

Definitely not.  These measures are temporary and do not alter the terms of the lease.   Once they are lifted, landlords will be free to employ such collection methods again and while some landlords have deep pockets, many more do not and almost all will have investors and/or funders to satisfy so it is highly unlikely that unpaid rent will simply be ignored for long once these protection measures end.

So what should commercial tenants be doing now?

Continue reading “COVID-19: New Protections For Commercial Tenants – Are Tenants Now ‘Safe’?”

COVID-19 Job Retention Scheme – Summary of Updates to UK Gov Guidance

By Nic Hart

30.04.2020

Whilst I am very mindful of furlough fatigue, there have been further updates to the Government Guidance on The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme – both How to Claim (short form and long form) and the Guidance. None of these have substantively changed but there are points to note in each, which are as follows.

The How to Claim (short form) deals with some of the practicalities of claiming. For those yet to do so please note that you need to submit your claim in one session – you cannot save it and return later. Sessions will time out after 15 minutes of inactivity.

There has been guidance given on what steps to take following a claim;

  1. keep a copy of all records, including:
    • the amount claimed and claim period for each employee
    • the claim reference number for your records
    • your calculations in case HMRC need more information about your claim
  2. tell your employees that you have made a claim and that they do not need to take any more action
  3. pay your employee their wages, if you have not already.

It must be stressed that Employers should record and retain documentation at all stages of the furlough process, both to be compliant with the requirements of the Treasury Direction but also to ensure that if there is any audit undertaken by HMRC they have the requisite records set out in the Guidance. Continue reading “COVID-19 Job Retention Scheme – Summary of Updates to UK Gov Guidance”

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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