CLLS Land Law Committee response to Law Commission consultation on Business Tenancies: The Right to Renew - September 2026

The response questions whether the formulaic tenant-protection process underpinning the 1954 Act is still needed given tenants' now-routine access to free legal information, and supports excluding periodic tenancies from the Act's scope while simplifying contracting out into a single-step process embedded in the lease itself.

It resists a separate tenant signature on the contracting-out declaration, favouring execution of the lease as sufficient evidence of consent, and supports closing the "Van Staden trap" by allowing all written tenancies, not just fixed-term ones, to be contracted out.

It argues that unauthorised subleases should never attract security of tenure regardless of the headlease's protected status, that the current "other terms" test from O'May should be retained rather than singled out for environmental-specific treatment, and that rent on renewal should not be discounted for a hypothetical fit-out period.