The 29 September quarter day is a good excuse to look at what your lease says, as most of the problems we see would have been cheap to fix a year earlier.
If you rent business premises, there is a fair chance your next rent payment falls due on 29 September. That date is Michaelmas, one of the four traditional quarter days that commercial leases in England and Wales have used for centuries to set when rent is paid. For most businesses it passes without a second thought. The invoice arrives, it gets paid, and everyone moves on.
That is exactly why it is a useful moment to pause. A commercial lease is usually one of the largest financial commitments a business makes, and yet many owners have not read theirs since the day they signed it. Quarter day is a natural prompt to check where you stand, whether you are a tenant paying the rent or a landlord receiving it.
This article looks at what is worth checking now, the situations where we see things most often go wrong and why working with an experienced commercial property solicitor tends to cost far less than dealing with the consequences of not doing so.
Why quarter days still matter
Quarter days are simply the four dates on which rent has traditionally fallen due: 25 March, 24 June, 29 September and 25 December. Modern leases do not have to follow them, and many do not, but a large proportion still do. Where a lease uses quarter days, they often do more than fix when rent is paid. Break dates, rent review dates and lease expiry dates are frequently tied to them as well.
That matters because the big decisions in a commercial lease happen months earlier, when notices need to be served and conditions need to be met. A break date on 29 September 2027, for example, might need notice by 29 March 2027. If nobody has looked at the lease before then, the opportunity can quietly disappear…
Five things worth checking before quarter day
You do not need to read every clause. These are the areas where a short check now tends to save you the later.
1. Your break date and its conditions
If your lease has a break clause, find out when it is, how much notice you need to give and what conditions attach to it. Most break clauses are conditional, which means the rent must be fully paid and the property handed back in a particular state for the break to work. Miss a condition and you can be locked in for the rest of the term. We have written a full guide to break clauses in commercial leases that walks through the timeline.
2. Any upcoming rent review
Many leases include a rent review, often every five years, and the review date is commonly a quarter day. Reviews can be upwards only, index linked or based on open market rent, and each works differently. If a review is coming up, both sides benefit from understanding the mechanism early.
Tenants can budget properly and prepare their position, and landlords can make sure the review is triggered correctly, because a review that is not started in line with the lease can be lost or delayed.
3. Your repair obligations
The repair clause is the one that most often surprises tenants at the end of a lease. A "full repairing" obligation can mean handing the premises back in better condition than you received them, and the resulting dilapidations claim can run into tens of thousands of pounds. Knowing what your lease requires and having a schedule of condition if you are taking on a new lease, gives you something to negotiate from rather than a bill to pay.
4. Whether the lease is coming to an end
If your lease expires in the next year or so, the question of what happens next depends on whether it is protected by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. A protected tenant usually has the right to a new lease, and a tenant whose lease was "contracted out" does not.
The two positions lead to very different conversations, and the timing of notices under the Act is strict. The Law Commission is currently consulting on changes to this area, so it is worth understanding where you stand before the rules move.
5. Whether your business has changed
Leases are written for the business you had when you signed. If you have grown, taken on a different kind of trade, sublet space or want to make alterations, the lease may need a landlord’s consent you have not yet asked for. Doing something the lease does not allow, even innocently, can put you in breach and hand the landlord leverage at the next negotiation.
What we see most often go wrong
In our experience, commercial property problems rarely come from anything dramatic. They tend to come from small things that nobody checked, like a tenant who serves a break notice by email when the lease requires recorded delivery, or a landlord who forgets to trigger a rent review and quietly loses two years of uplift. We see buyers take on a building without noticing that the sitting tenant's lease gives them a right to stay, and businesses spend money on a fit-out they never had permission for. None of these are unusual, and all of them could have been avoided with a quick look at the lease beforehand.
These situations tend to become expensive because by the time they surface, the other side already holds the stronger position. Most of them turn into the kind of landlord and tenant disputes that nobody wanted and that could have been avoided with a conversation a year earlier.
What an experienced commercial property solicitor actually does
It is easy to think of a solicitor as someone you instruct when there is a transaction to complete. In commercial property, the more valuable role is often the advice in between: knowing your lease well enough to tell you what is coming and what to do about it.
When we work with businesses and landlords across Manchester and the North West, that usually looks like:
- Reviewing the lease you already have, so you know your break dates, review dates, repair obligations and consent requirements before they become urgent
- Negotiating new leases properly, because the heads of terms shape everything that follows and the points that matter most are easiest to win at the start (our guide to negotiating commercial leases covers the main ones)
- Handling notices and deadlines, so break notices, rent review triggers and 1954 Act notices are served correctly and on time
- Advising on purchases and sales, where the due diligence on an occupied building is as much about the leases as the bricks (see our guide to buying commercial property)
- Resolving problems early, ideally before they reach our commercial litigation team, though we have that option if it is needed
The common thread is that experience lets us spot the issue before it costs you money. An experienced solicitor who has seen a hundred dilapidations claims knows what a landlord’s surveyor will look for, and one who has dealt with dozens of break notices knows the ways they fail. That knowledge is what you are paying for, and it is usually a fraction of what a missed break or a lost rent review would cost you in the future.
A note for landlords
Everything above applies to landlords too, just from the other side. Quarter day is a sensible time to check that rent is being paid in line with the lease, that any review due has been triggered, and that tenants are complying with their repair and use obligations. It is far easier to raise a small issue now than to argue about a large one at lease end. It’s also worth noting that a well-managed lease is also a more valuable asset if you ever come to sell or refinance.
Speak to our commercial property team
Commercial leases are not designed to be read once and forgotten. The businesses that get the most out of theirs are the ones who know what is coming and plan for it.
If quarter day has prompted you to look at your lease, or you are about to sign a new one, our commercial property and development team in Didsbury advises landlords, tenants, investors and developers across Manchester and the North West.
A short review now is often all it takes to avoid a much bigger headache down the line. If you would like us to look at your lease, or you simply want to understand where you stand, please get in touch and we will be happy to talk it through