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.

In the present Act the draftsman knew better than to do this. 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 be equally unreal if, assuming the statutory declaration was effective, what was contained in clause 8.2 of the lease was ineffective, because it applied to a statutory declaration rather than a declaration and because it irrelevantly mentioned the wrong paragraph of schedule 2 to the order.

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”. To say that this test is one of substance rather than form may well be correct, but he should not mask the point that the style, even the layout in the prescribed form, may at least in some respects be of the essence.

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.

I conclude on this review of the authorities that, save only for Lex Service, the consistent view taken by the courts has been that where a notice is served by a primary method authorised by section 23, such as by recorded delivery post, it matters not whether the notice was received and that there is no scope for the application of section 7, the risk of non-receipt being cast on the intended recipient.