dilapidations

---
name: dilapidations
description: Turns your repair covenant and any schedule of condition into a costed dilapidations position: the statutory cap under section 18(1) applied correctly with both limbs stated, a plan for commissioning an interim schedule years before lease end so repairs are phased and budgeted instead of billed as one figure at expiry, the terminal schedule and quantified demand process timed against the Pre-Action Protocol's actual response deadlines, reinstatement of alterations costed as its own head of claim, and a reserve plan built from your own numbers for the years of rent still left on the term. Use when you hold a commercial lease on a shop, pub, restaurant, cafe or small hotel in England or Wales and want the dilapidations bill planned for from the start rather than discovered at the door on the way out.
---

# The bill at the end of the lease, planned for from the start rather than discovered at the door

You give this the repair covenant from your lease, any schedule of condition, the remaining term and any break dates, any schedule of dilapidations or quantified demand already served on you, and any alterations you have made under licence. You get back the statutory cap on disrepair damages applied to your position with the exact wording it rests on, a costed case for commissioning an interim schedule now rather than waiting for the terminal one, the terminal schedule and quantified demand timeline set against the actual days the Pre-Action Protocol allows, reinstatement of your alterations identified as a separate liability from repair, and a working reserve plan built only from figures you supply. It will not value your reversion, cost a single repair, or tell you what to put aside each month, because those are a chartered building surveyor's job and an invented number would be worse than no number at all.

## What it does

1. **Start from the repair covenant this skill does not re-derive.** The repair obligation, whatever schedule of condition limits it, and the clause reference all come from the lease abstract this pack's lease-read skill produces. Copy the covenant verbatim from that output, the schedule of condition reference and date if one exists, and the clause governing yield-up at the end of the term. If lease-read has not been run yet, say so and stop rather than reading the lease again here. Two readings of the same clause is how a word gets silently changed between documents.

2. **State the statutory cap under section 18(1) precisely, both limbs, before any figure is discussed.** Section 18(1) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 is the ceiling on what a landlord can ever recover for disrepair, and it has two separate limbs. The first: "Damages for a breach of a covenant or agreement to keep or put premises in repair during the currency of a lease, or to leave or put premises in repair at the termination of a lease, whether such covenant or agreement is expressed or implied, and whether general or specific, shall in no case exceed the amount (if any) by which the value of the reversion (whether immediate or not) in the premises is diminished owing to the breach of such covenant or agreement as aforesaid." The second, which can extinguish the claim entirely: "no damage shall be recovered for a breach of any such covenant or agreement to leave or put premises in repair at the termination of a lease, if it is shown that the premises, in whatever state of repair they might be, would at or shortly after the termination of the tenancy have been or be pulled down, or such structural alterations made therein as would render valueless the repairs covered by the covenant or agreement." The cap only touches the repairing covenant. It does not apply to separate obligations such as decoration or reinstatement, which are assessed on their own terms.

3. **Record what a diminution valuation actually is, because a repair estimate is not one.** The cap in limb one is measured against the reversion, what the property is worth to sell or let, not what it costs to fix. RICS' professional standard records the standard method as two valuations of the same property at the same date, one "in compliance" with the lease and one "out of compliance" as it actually stands, each reached by identifying the likely class of purchaser and the market's response, with the diminution being the difference. A rental value or a yield feeds that exercise, it does not replace it, and a cost-of-works figure is only ever the other side of the "lower of the two" test the courts apply, never the diminution valuation itself. If nobody has commissioned a valuation on this basis, record that as a gap rather than treating a schedule total as if it were one.

4. **Commission an interim schedule years before the term ends, and say why the timing matters.** RICS defines an interim schedule of dilapidations as one "prepared in contemplation of remedy of any alleged breaches during the contractual term of the lease, and not relating to yield-up obligations", as distinct from a terminal schedule prepared at or near the end of the term. There is no fixed point in the lease at which an interim schedule becomes available. It can be commissioned at any time the repair covenant is breached, and doing so early converts a single bill at expiry into a sequence of smaller, budgeted jobs carried out while there is still time to shop the work around and phase it against cash flow. This is the practical core of planning for the bill from the start rather than at the door.

5. **Check whether the Leasehold Property (Repairs) Act 1938 limits what a landlord can do about an interim schedule, before assuming it can simply be enforced.** Where the lease was originally granted for seven years or more and three or more years remain unexpired, the 1938 Act gates the landlord's forfeiture and damages claims: a right to damages during the currency of the lease "shall not be enforceable by action commenced" unless the landlord first serves a notice under section 146 of the Law of Property Act 1925, and if the tenant counter-notices within 28 days claiming the benefit of the Act, "no proceedings... shall be taken by the lessor... otherwise than with the leave of the court", given only on specific grounds such as preventing substantial diminution in the reversion. In practice an interim schedule is often served to start the conversation and phase work by agreement, not to force it through court, and many leases separately give the landlord a right of entry to do the work itself and recover the cost as a debt, a route the 1938 Act and section 18(1) do not touch at all.

6. **Set the terminal schedule and quantified demand against the Pre-Action Protocol's real timetable, not a general sense of "soon".** The Dilapidations Protocol sets out the sequence and the actual days involved. The schedule of dilapidations should generally be sent "within 56 days after the termination of the tenancy", and the quantified demand is sent on the same timescale, specifying a date for the tenant's response that will "usually be within 56 days after sending the Quantified Demand." The parties are then encouraged to meet, "generally within 28 days after the tenant sends the Response." Where the landlord relies on a formal diminution valuation and the tenant runs a diminution defence, the tenant's own valuation is expected "within a reasonable time... generally within 56 days" of the landlord's breakdown of losses. Record every date against the calendar day it actually falls on for this lease, not the protocol's generic figure, because a missed deadline is exactly the conduct the court weighs when it later decides who pays the costs of any litigation.

7. **Cost reinstatement of alterations as its own head of claim, and take the fact of the obligation from the alterations-consent record rather than assuming it.** Reinstatement is not a repair, and section 18(1) does not cap it. Whether the obligation exists at all, and on what terms, was decided when consent for the alteration was sought, and this pack's alterations-consent skill is where that record lives: the licence to alter, whether it carries a reinstatement condition, and whether that condition triggers automatically or only if the landlord asks for it in writing before the term ends. Pull that answer across rather than re-deciding it here. Where an alteration was made with no licence and no lease provision on reinstatement, record it as an open item rather than inventing a position.

8. **Build a reserve plan for the remaining years of the term from the owner's own figures, and stop the moment a figure is missing.** Take the repair items already identified through steps 2 to 7, the interim schedule if one has been commissioned, and the years remaining on the term, and lay them out year by year so that known items are spread across the years left rather than assumed to land in one go at expiry. This is a scheduling exercise on supplied numbers, not a forecast, and it produces no figure that was not put in by the owner or their surveyor. A business that has been paying rent and running costs on a known rhythm for years can usually absorb a phased programme that it could never have absorbed as a single demand.

9. **Record what happens if nothing is done, plainly and without dramatising it.** Ignoring a schedule does not make the liability disappear, and where the 1938 Act does not apply, a landlord who forfeits or sues after the term ends is not gated by anything except section 18(1) itself. Where a rent deposit deed exists, note it here: many landlords draw against a rent deposit for a dilapidations shortfall before pursuing the tenant for the balance, so the deposit terms belong in this record even though lease-read logged them first. Set against that, RICS' own standard records that "the majority of dilapidations disputes are settled privately between the parties, usually with the assistance of their respective surveyors", and a claim raised alongside a continuing rent liability, for example where the tenant is holding over past the contractual term, is routinely resolved without litigation once both sides have a costed position to negotiate from. Record this as the realistic range of outcomes, not a warning designed to force a settlement.

10. **Hand the structured facts to Codex and let it build the files, so no clause, date or figure is retyped by hand.** Run:

    ```
    codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
    ```

    Claude hands over the repair covenant and schedule of condition from lease-read, the remaining term and break dates, any schedule of dilapidations, quantified demand or response already served with their dates, the alterations and reinstatement position from alterations-consent, and the owner's own figures for any interim works and reserve planning. Codex returns the covenant and condition record, the dilapidations timeline tested against the Protocol, the interim schedule plan, the terminal schedule and quantified demand register, the reinstatement register, the reserve plan and a gaps register. Codex estimates no repair cost and no diminution value and reaches no view on whether any claim is reasonable.

## Then it checks

1. The repair covenant is quoted verbatim with its clause number from the lease-read output, and any schedule of condition is recorded with its own date, or the file states plainly that lease-read has not yet been run.
2. The file states both limbs of section 18(1) in full and records, item by item, whether any breach falls outside the cap because it is a non-repair obligation such as decoration or reinstatement.
3. Every diminution figure in the file is sourced to a surveyor's in-compliance and out-of-compliance valuation of the reversion, and any repair-cost figure standing in for it is flagged, not treated as equivalent.
4. Every interim schedule recommendation states the years remaining on the term and whether the lease was originally granted for seven years or more with three or more years unexpired, so the 1938 Act test is answered rather than assumed.
5. Every date in the terminal schedule and quantified demand timeline is calculated against this lease's actual termination date using the Protocol's stated day counts, not left as a generic "within a reasonable time."
6. No file states a sinking fund percentage, an average repair cost or any reserve figure that was not supplied by the owner or their surveyor.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- This skill covers England and Wales only. Section 18 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 and the Dilapidations Protocol are England and Wales instruments. If the premises are in Scotland or Northern Ireland, say so and stop rather than applying an English rule to a Scottish or Northern Irish lease.
- Never state a rent-as-percentage-of-turnover figure, an average repair cost per square foot, or any reserve or sinking fund percentage as a benchmark. No published figure exists for a single independent UK venue, and an owner who budgets against a borrowed number will either over-reserve against cash the business needs now or under-reserve against a bill that is genuinely theirs.
- Never treat a cost-of-works total as the diminution valuation, and never let a schedule of dilapidations total pass as a reversion value. They answer different questions and the lower of the two, properly evidenced, is what section 18(1) actually caps.
- Never assume a reinstatement obligation exists because an alteration was made. Take the answer from the alterations-consent record of the licence terms, and record an unlicensed alteration as an open item rather than a decided one.
- Never carry a schedule of dilapidations, a quantified demand or a response forward from an earlier version without checking the date it was sent and superseding it explicitly. A stale total quietly becomes the working figure if nobody marks it replaced.
- A schedule of dilapidations and any diminution valuation must be prepared or checked by the owner's own chartered building surveyor, and the legal position, including forfeiture, the 1938 Act and any dispute, by the owner's own solicitor. This skill does neither. It applies published rules and the owner's own documents to build a working position for those two professionals to check, and it is not a valuation, a legal opinion or a statement that any claim is or is not recoverable.

## Built from
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1927, section 18, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/17-18/36/section/18, read 23 September 2026: the statutory cap and both limbs quoted in full in step 2, and the exclusion of non-repair covenants noted in step 2.
- Leasehold Property (Repairs) Act 1938, section 1, as amended by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 section 51(2), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1and2geo6/1-2/34/section/1, read 23 September 2026: the seven year and three year unexpired test, the counter-notice procedure and the grounds for leave of the court, all in step 5.
- Law of Property Act 1925, section 146, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/15-16/20/section/146, read 23 September 2026: the forfeiture notice requirement that gates the 1938 Act procedure in step 5 and the general forfeiture position in step 9.
- RICS, "Dilapidations", RICS professional standard, England and Wales, 7th edition, September 2016, effective from 1 December 2016, reissued as a professional standard December 2023, https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/standards/Dilapidations_rebrand_2024.pdf, read 23 September 2026: the interim and terminal schedule definitions in step 4, the diminution valuation methodology in step 3, and the settlement rate in step 9.
- Ministry of Justice, "Pre-Action Protocol for Claims for Damages in Relation to the Physical State of Commercial Property at Termination of a Tenancy" (the Dilapidations Protocol), https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/protocol/pre-action-protocol-for-claims-for-damages-in-relation-to-the-physical-state-of-commercial-property-at-termination-of-a-tenancy-the-dilapidations-protocol, last updated 30 January 2017, read 23 September 2026: every day count in step 6.

# dilapidations

## You are given
The repair covenant for one UK commercial hospitality lease, quoted verbatim with its clause number, taken from this pack's lease-read output, together with any schedule of condition that limits it and its date. The remaining lease term, the contractual expiry date and any break dates. Any schedule of dilapidations, quantified demand or response already served on either party, each with the date it was sent or received and who prepared it. The alterations and reinstatement position for this lease from this pack's alterations-consent output, naming each alteration, whether it was licensed, and whether the licence carries a reinstatement condition and its trigger. Any figures the owner or their chartered building surveyor has already supplied for the cost of specific repair or reinstatement items, each with its source and date. The rent deposit deed terms if one exists. All judgement calls, including whether to commission an interim schedule, whether any item is a repair or reinstatement, and what a diminution valuation should conclude, have already been made by the owner's own surveyor and solicitor or are explicitly marked as not yet decided, and are supplied to you as such.

## Produce
Write into a `./dilapidations-output/` folder:

1. `covenant-and-condition.csv` with these columns in this order: `clause_ref`, `covenant_type`, `covenant_text_verbatim`, `schedule_of_condition_reference`, `schedule_of_condition_date`, `limits_repair_standard`. `covenant_type` is exactly one of `repair`, `decoration`, `reinstatement`, `yield-up`, `other`. `limits_repair_standard` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`. One row per covenant supplied.
2. `dilapidations-timeline.csv` with columns: `event`, `description`, `protocol_reference`, `days_from_trigger`, `trigger_date`, `calculated_deadline`, `actual_date_if_occurred`, `status`. `status` is exactly one of `not yet due`, `due`, `met`, `missed`. `days_from_trigger` and `protocol_reference` are taken only from the Pre-Action Protocol figures supplied to you, never invented.
3. `interim-schedule-plan.csv` with columns: `item_ref`, `breach_description`, `clause_ref`, `years_before_expiry`, `1938_act_test_applies`, `proposed_action`, `cost_source`, `cost_gbp`. `1938_act_test_applies` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`, taken from the supplied lease-grant term and years unexpired only. `cost_source` is exactly one of `surveyor supplied`, `contractor estimate supplied`, `no document supplied`. Every row with `no document supplied` leaves `cost_gbp` empty and is listed in `gaps.md`.
4. `terminal-schedule-register.csv` with columns: `item_ref`, `clause_ref`, `breach_description`, `remedial_work_required`, `cost_source`, `cost_gbp`, `superseded`, `supersession_reason`. `cost_source` uses the same three values as file 3. `superseded` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`, taken only from a supplied statement of the landlord's intentions.
5. `quantified-demand-facts.csv` with columns: `element`, `amount_gbp`, `basis`, `evidence_document_supplied`, `evidence_reference`. `basis` is exactly one of `cost of works`, `diminution valuation`, `loss of rent`, `rates`, `insurance`, `professional fees`, `other`. `evidence_document_supplied` is `yes` or `no`. A row with `evidence_document_supplied` set to `no` leaves `amount_gbp` empty and is listed in `gaps.md`.
6. `reinstatement-register.csv` with columns: `alteration_ref`, `description_verbatim`, `licence_reference`, `licence_date`, `reinstatement_required`, `reinstatement_condition_verbatim`, `trigger`, `cost_source`, `cost_gbp`. `reinstatement_required` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`, taken only from the alterations-consent output supplied. `trigger` is exactly one of `automatic`, `on landlord's written request`, `not stated`.
7. `reserve-plan.csv` with columns: `year_number`, `calendar_year`, `item_ref`, `item_description`, `source_file`, `cost_gbp`, `planning_status`. One row per item per year it is scheduled into, built only by placing items already costed in files 3, 4 and 6 into the years remaining on the term as supplied. `planning_status` is exactly one of `scheduled`, `unscheduled, no year supplied`. No total, percentage or average is calculated across rows.
8. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every item with `no document supplied` or `evidence_document_supplied` set to `no`; every covenant, alteration or timeline event marked `not stated`; every Protocol deadline in `dilapidations-timeline.csv` with a `status` of `missed`; every reinstatement item with no licence reference; and any figure supplied without a date or a named source.

## Rules
- Codex records, calculates elapsed days against supplied Protocol figures, and schedules already-costed items into years. It never estimates a repair cost, a diminution value or a reinstatement cost. Every cost cell without a supplied source is left empty with a line in `gaps.md`.
- Never decide whether the 1938 Act applies to a claim, whether an item is superseded, or whether a breach is a repair, an alteration or a reinstatement matter beyond the classification already supplied. Record what was supplied; do not reclassify it.
- Never write a sinking fund percentage, an average repair cost per square foot, or any other benchmark figure into any file. No such figure exists for a single independent UK venue and none is to be recorded, however it is asked for.
- Never carry a schedule of dilapidations, a quantified demand or a response total forward without its date. Where two versions of the same document are supplied, use only the version marked current by the owner and note the earlier one as superseded in `gaps.md`.
- Never quote the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927, the Leasehold Property (Repairs) Act 1938 or the Dilapidations Protocol from memory. Use only the wording and day counts supplied in the input; if a figure needed for `dilapidations-timeline.csv` was not supplied, leave the deadline empty and add a line to `gaps.md` rather than filling it in.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every quoted covenant, breach description and licence condition is copied exactly, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner's own chartered building surveyor to check every cost and valuation, and for their solicitor to check the legal position, before anything is sent, agreed or relied on. It applies supplied facts to published rules and is not a valuation, a legal opinion or a ruling that any claim is or is not recoverable.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the count of covenants recorded and how many carry a schedule of condition, the count of items in `interim-schedule-plan.csv` where the 1938 Act test applies, every Protocol deadline in `dilapidations-timeline.csv` with a status of `missed` listed in full, the total number of items with `no document supplied` or `evidence_document_supplied` set to `no` across all files, the count of reinstatement items with no licence reference, the number of years the reserve plan in `reserve-plan.csv` actually covers against the years remaining on the term supplied, and the `gaps.md` item count.