Can I enact a rent suspension clause in my commercial lease?
Most rent suspension clauses in commercial property leases are unlikely to come to the assistance of the tenant. These clauses normally apply only where the premises has suffered substantial physical damage and are, as a consequence, incapable of being occupied, used or accessed. The coronavirus pandemic does not involve any physical damage to a property, loss from the crisis will be purely financial. Such losses then will not be covered by the landlord’s buildings insurance policy in a way that will allow a tenant to claim rent suspension.
Related FAQs
The Government will provide the lender with a partial guarantee (80%) against the outstanding facility balance, subject to an overall cap per lender. Note, the Government guarantee is to the lender only, the borrower will always remain 100% liable for the debt.
We understand that will make an initial claim for recovery against the borrower and will, once its normal recovery procedures have been completed, claim against the Government guarantee.
The changes will not apply to end users who are a small company. If you meet two out the following 3 conditions, you will meet the small company definition and are therefore exempt from the changes to IR35:
- Annual turnover is no more than £10.2 million
- Balance sheet total is no more than £5.1 million
- No more than 50 employees
Companies will always be classified as small in their first financial year. Public companies will always be considered to be medium or large businesses and cannot fall under this exemption.
For a group company to be a small company its parent company must also meet the small company definition.
No. This bill relates to corporate insolvencies only. Should you require any advice as to personal insolvency situations, please contact our team.
It is the individual assessment by an organisation of its Covid-19 risk in its workplace that will be central. There may be common features across sites or areas of a site but every workplace will have a different risk profile depending on the service it offers and the workers who deliver those services. No one size fits all.
The context of managing Covid-19 risk is the need to tie in with UK government guidance and HSE advice – which despite being a lot more comprehensive than it was, is not a panacea and will continue to evolve. The difficulty we have with this in the context of the known increased risk to BAME employees from Covid-19 is that our understanding of the risk is, we would suggest, at a pretty early stage which makes it more difficult to address. However we know the increased risk exists and we owe our BAME workers a duty to manage that risk and keep them safe.
We also have a duty to consult employees. This is critical in managing this risk – ensuring BAME workers have a loud voice in the assessment process will be very important.
Where an individual has a particular characteristic, for instance they’re pregnant, they have physical or mental disabilities etc, the law requires us to look at that individual or, where it is a group, that group of individuals and assess the risk to them and take any reasonably practicable steps to control the risk to them.
Risk control hierarchy is key. In “normal” businesses we reduce our Covid-19 risk by keeping people away from the workplace – “avoid, eliminate and substitute” then changing work practices (e.g. social distancing measures) before we arrive at PPE. In a healthcare context, we arrive at PPE a lot more quickly.
We need to ensure our people are given sufficient information, instruction and training so they can do their jobs safely and we must consult workers and involve them in workplace safety – this is going to be critical in the context of Covid-19.
You must only make a report under RIDDOR (The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) when:
- An unintended incident at work has led to someone’s possible or actual exposure to coronavirus. This must be reported as a dangerous occurrence
- A worker has been diagnosed as having COVID 19 and there is reasonable evidence that it was caused by exposure at work. This must be reported as a case of disease
- A worker dies as a result of occupational exposure to coronavirus.