Business Tenancy in UK Law

Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 confers a qualified security of tenure on business tenants. A tenant in occupation of the premises under a tenancy for a term of years certain may stay over and request a new tenancy beginning upon its expiry, unless before the tenancy was granted the landlord had served a notice informing the tenant of his rights and the parties had then agreed to exclude the relevant provisions of the Act.

There is but one tenancy of which the terms which would otherwise govern its coming to an end are modified by the Act. It is true that the tenancy may continue by virtue of the Act after the period at which, apart from Part II of the Act, it would have come to an end, but it is throughout one and the same tenancy.

It would, to use the judge's words, be “bordering on the absurd” if a statutory declaration was held to be ineffective on the grounds that it differed from the prescribed form because a) it was both expressly and in law in a more solemn form than that form; and b) although it stated that notice was served before the lease was entered into, it did not state that it was served more than fourteen days before the lease was entered into.

Of course, the statutory requirements in relation to a notice or a declaration could be so clearly and unequivocally expressed that strict compliance would be required and that any deviation, however insignificant, from those requirements would render a purported notice or declaration invalid. Sometimes, indeed, although it conflicts with common and commercial common sense, this may be the result because it is correct as a matter of law. However, this is not such a case.

However, the requirement of paragraph 3 is not that a declaration must be “in the form set out in paragraph 7,” but that it must be “in the form or substantially in the form set out in paragraph 7”. Accordingly, the first issue is whether the statutory declaration in paragraph 8, as used in this case, is substantially in the form of the declaration in paragraph 7.

I do not think it is necessary in these cases to inquire whether there is a "renewal" of a previous contract of employment or a "re-engagement" under a new contract of employment. That is too fine a distinction for ordinary mortals to comprehend. Suffice it to say that you must always take the final contract which expires, and on the expiration of which he claims redundancy payment or compensation for unfair dismissal.