On September 16th, the government announced a new update about Enforcement rules for commercial property.
Support for businesses has been extended from its original end-date of September 30th, 2020 to December 31st, meaning that commercial tenants will be prevented from eviction for the remainder of the year.
The legislation already in place – which prevents landlords from using Commercial Rent Arrears Recovery – now covers an extended period which ends on December 24th, 2020 unless the tenant owes 276 days of unpaid rent, and 366 days of rent when a notice of enforcement is delivered on or after December 25th.
Alok Sharma, the government’s Business Secretary, said the following about the extension:
“Extending the temporary measures we put in place earlier this year to protect businesses from the threat of eviction will give them some much-needed breathing space at a critical moment in the UK’s economic recovery.”
The new measures were introduced in addition to the government’s £160 billion package of support that has been made available for businesses during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – a crisis that has been putting millions of livelihoods at risk throughout 2020.
It is hoped that the extension of protection against evictions will help to mitigate the negative impacts of the pandemic on UK businesses and workers, across a range of sectors. However, government guidance also encourages landlords and their tenants to work together to agree rent repayment options; a Code of Practice was published in June to support discussions of this nature.