Hello to everyone

[Fiz]

Hi,
I have been here many a times to seek information but never joined and like to help people when I can with that information..

I find myself in a position of needing some assistance on a business property lease.
My landlord has served me a breach of lease notice the outcome of which is forfeiture if lease if I do not remedy them. The issues is a lot of the concerns raised were present when we took the unit.

I will post more details once I am advised which forum is the most relevant for my issue.

Thank and appreciate any assistance.

[Kati]

to LB Fiz

If you want to post your query here on this thread, I'll tag Crazy council and Peridot who can hopefully help you xx

[Fiz]

Apologies in Advance if my reply comes across long winded. There is a lot of background for us to have arrived at the current situation.

The notice was served by the landlords lawyer, hand delivered this friday gone by 25th of may under section 146 of the law property act 1925.

It sets out "serious breaches" which need to be remedied in full within four weeks.

We have been tenants here for 5 odd years and renewed our lease with the new landlord in 2016.

All the said breaches were already present when they renewed the lease. They have been in my unit many times and were aware of everything when renewing.

The landlord has taken some sort of dislike to us, we have tried our best to comply with them but they just want us out and have made many changes to the site which makes it very difficult to run our business.

We have offered solutions but they just reject them but at the same time give other tenants assistance in those same issues.

We have been harassed by their policies and constant reneging on any verbal agreements and if we email to get confirmation they do not reply.

They also evicted a family member of mine from here because they unfortunately like almost the other tenants here gave up there tenancy protection under pressure..

They said they do not want our type of business on site(motor trade) and used that excuse to not renew his contract . There is another motor trader on the site who also does not have tenancy protection yet they renewed his lease.

After that we have not had a good relationship with them. We used to have parking spaces outside our unit which they turned into loading bays, making it very difficult to operate without using the loading bay for the cars that customers leave. They started a private parking scheme to monitor these new rules. They have a paid car park and I asked if we could have bays in there but they refused.

A few weeks ago they sent the parking attendant straight down to us ( he told us as much and he drove straight down ) we explained to him that they keep targeting us and he was understanding and left.

We are at the bottom of the site.. We do not affect any ones business but the way the site is we are usually the ones affected.
Regardless we have a good relationship with our neighbours and I do not think there is any one who has any complaints about us.

After this incident with parking warden the two managers came down and said they want to have a word.

I refused and said put whatever they have to say in writing in, to this response they threatened to use the covenants of the lease to deal with me. To this comment I got a bit annoyed and laid out all the unfair treatment/harassment I have felt.

They made accusations which were all disproved and any that had some merit I had offered a solution to on my part.

One of the solutions was to allow me to widen the opening to the unit so I can use it more efficiently. They in the end said if that is a solution that will resolve the situation then they will look into it look into it seriously and do it properly under a license to alter.

I said that it is good that we can move forward positively and look forward to getting back on a good footing.
We left it at that.

After not hearing back for over a week I received an email saying that a surveyor was coming in to have a look at the lintel ( another issue we have been having with the entrance) .
In the reply to that email I asked about what was the update on widening the entrance to which I received an out of the office notice.

The surveyor it turns out was not here to look at the lintel but rather to do a report for the landlord and started taking pictures of the unit.

We asked him to leave because we were busy and did. Not have time to deal with him.

After this I followed up again about widening the entrance and moving forward but was ignored again.

That same day I received this notice. Again proving my case about not trusting any verbal agreement with them.
If it helps I do have a witness who was present when the conversation took place about all the issues with management.

We are also liable for this report apparently because of a covenant in the lease.

I don't t know if its worth pointing out that we had to take the last landlord to court because they were trying to raise our rent in a manner which was akin to bullying and also remove our tenancy protection forcefully. The new landlord tried a similar approach but in end the they offered market rent and agree to leave the tenancy protection in the contract.. Maybe this is why they do not like us.

I would like any help on this matter because surely it is malicious behaviour to bring up so called "breaches" after knowing there existence.

Also the previous managers used to let the units on the basis that we can make any changes as long as we remedied them when we left. It was all verbal with them.

I spoke to previous use tenants about providing me with a statement to back this up.

Is there any way to stop thinotice moving forward?

There are lots of other details which they have pointed out. I can forward the notice and a copy of my lease if required.

I am sure I have not been very articulate so I do apologise for that.

[Fiz]

I also forgot to mention that some of the things mention were part of the unit or the unit was already in that state when took it initially.