renewal-rights

---
name: renewal-rights
description: Settles, in writing and long before you need it, whether you have a legal right to stay in your premises when the lease runs out: whether Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 applies to you, whether it was validly excluded, which notice each side can serve and when, which grounds a landlord could use to refuse you, whether compensation would be payable, and the exact date your right to apply to court dies. Use when your lease has three years or less to run, or the moment a landlord's notice arrives.
---

# A written answer to the only question that matters at the end of a lease: can they make you leave, and when

You give this the lease, the contracting out papers if any exist, the dates, your occupation history and any notice that has already been served. You get back a written finding on whether Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 applies to your tenancy, the evidence for it, the notice routes open to each side with the earliest and latest dates each can be used, the grounds a landlord could raise against you and what each one would require them to prove, whether compensation would be payable and how it is calculated, and one date printed larger than everything else: the last day you can apply to court. It will not tell you what the new rent should be, and it will not tell you whether to fight or to move, because both depend on things no statute holds.

## What it does

1. **Start with occupation, not with the lease, because the Act attaches to occupation.** Section 23 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 applies Part II "to any tenancy where the property comprised in the tenancy is or includes premises which are occupied by the tenant and are so occupied for the purposes of a business carried on by him or for those and other purposes", and defines business to include "a trade, profession or employment and includes any activity carried on by a body of persons, whether corporate or unincorporate". Record who is in occupation today, under what name, since when, and whether the occupier is the tenant named on the lease, a company the tenant controls, or somebody else entirely. A lease in a personal name with a limited company trading from the premises is the commonest way an independent owner discovers, too late, that the occupation question is not obvious.

2. **Rule out the exclusions before doing any more work, because three of them end the enquiry.** Section 43 takes agricultural holdings, farm business tenancies and mining leases outside Part II altogether. Subsection (3) is the one that catches short lettings: Part II "does not apply to a tenancy granted for a term certain not exceeding six months" unless the tenancy contains provision for renewing or extending beyond six months, or "the tenant has been in occupation for a period which, together with any period during which any predecessor in the carrying on of the business carried on by the tenant was in occupation, exceeds twelve months". So a run of six month lettings becomes protected once the occupation passes twelve months, which is the opposite of what most landlords using that structure believe.

3. **Test the contracting out with the papers, not with the recital.** Section 38A(1) lets the parties exclude sections 24 to 28, and subsection (3) makes that exclusion void unless the landlord served the Schedule 1 warning notice and the Schedule 2 requirements were met. Schedule 2 requires the notice "must be served on the tenant not less than 14 days before the tenant enters into the tenancy to which it applies", followed by the tenant's simple declaration, or, where those 14 days were not given, a statutory declaration made before an independent person. Record the date of the warning notice, the date of the declaration, which type it was, and the date the lease was completed, then count the days. Where the papers cannot be produced, the finding is that the position cannot be stated from the documents supplied, and that goes to the solicitor as question one. It is not a finding that the lease is protected.

4. **If Part II applies, write down what section 24 actually does, because it is the thing nobody believes.** Section 24(1) provides that "A tenancy to which this Part of this Act applies shall not come to an end unless terminated in accordance with the provisions of this Part of this Act", and that either party may apply to the court for the grant of a new tenancy. The contractual expiry date is therefore not the end of anything by itself. The tenancy continues on the same terms until it is brought to an end by one of the statutory routes, and the rent stays at the passing rent until a new one is agreed or ordered. That continuation is worth money in a falling market and costs money in a rising one, and an owner who does not know it exists tends to move out on the expiry date for no reason.

5. **Map the two notice routes with their real dates.** A landlord ends the tenancy by a section 25 notice, which "shall not have effect unless it is given not more than twelve nor less than six months before the date of the termination specified therein", must state whether the landlord opposes a new tenancy, must specify one or more section 30(1) grounds if it does, and, if it does not, "shall not have effect unless it sets out the landlord's proposals as to the property to be comprised in the new tenancy, the rent to be payable and the other terms". A tenant starts the process by a section 26 request, available where the current tenancy was "granted for a term of years certain exceeding one year" or for a term of years certain and thereafter from year to year, and the request must specify a commencement date "not more than twelve nor less than six months after the making of the request". Write both windows as dates in the owner's own calendar year, not as descriptions.

6. **List the seven grounds of opposition and, beside each, what the landlord would have to show.** Section 30(1) gives grounds (a) to (g): the state of repair resulting from the tenant's own breach of repairing obligations; "persistent delay in paying rent which has become due"; other substantial breaches or a reason connected with the tenant's use or management of the holding; suitable alternative accommodation offered on reasonable terms; a sub letting of part where letting the whole would produce substantially more rent; the landlord's intention to demolish or reconstruct where possession is needed to do it; and the landlord's intention to occupy for its own business or as a residence, subject to the five year restriction in subsection (2). Mark which of the seven are discretionary and which are not. Grounds (f) and (g) are the ones an owner is most likely to meet in a small parade, and they are the two that carry compensation.

7. **Work out whether compensation would be payable and at what multiple, because it changes what a move is worth.** Section 37 provides compensation where the court refuses a new tenancy on grounds (e), (f) or (g) alone. The sum is the rateable value of the holding multiplied by the appropriate multiplier, or "twice the rateable value of the holding" where, during the whole of the fourteen years immediately preceding the termination of the current tenancy, the premises have been occupied for the purposes of a business and any change of occupier was a business succession. Record the rateable value taken from the valuation list, the date of that list, and the occupation history that supports or defeats the fourteen year condition. An owner two years short of fourteen years is looking at half the money, and that is a fact worth knowing before deciding when to move.

8. **Put the court deadline at the top of the file and treat it as the only hard date in the process.** Section 29A provides that the court "shall not entertain an application ... if it is made after the end of the statutory period", which ends on the date specified in the landlord's section 25 notice or immediately before the date specified in the tenant's section 26 request. Section 29B allows the parties to agree in writing to extend that period, and the agreement must be made before the period ends. There is also a floor: no application under section 24(1) may be entertained before the end of the period of two months beginning with the making of a section 26 request, unless the landlord has already given notice of opposition. Write the date, write who must diarise it, and write that an agreed extension has to be in writing and in hand before the date passes.

9. **Hand the structured facts to Codex and let it build the files.** Run:

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

   Claude hands over the occupation history, the lease dates, the contracting out papers and their dates, any notice already served with its date and its stated content, the rateable value with the list it came from, and the owner's own answers. Codex returns the eligibility record, the notice window calendar, the grounds table, the compensation calculation and a gaps register. Codex never decides whether Part II applies and never drafts a notice.

10. **Use section 40 to find out who the landlord actually is before you need to serve anything on them.** Section 40 lets each side require information from the other by notice in the prescribed form. A tenant can require a reversioner to state whether they own the freehold or are a mortgagee in possession, and a landlord can require a tenant to state whether they occupy for business purposes and to give details of sub tenancies. The reply is due within one month, and a party whose information later becomes inaccurate within six months must correct it within one month of finding out. The notice cannot be served more than two years before the tenancy would expire. This is the cheapest step in the whole process and the one most often skipped, and a notice served on the wrong landlord is a notice that did nothing.

## Then it checks

1. The file states the country the premises sit in, and if it is not England or Wales the file stops and says so.
2. The file states who is in occupation, under what legal name, since what date, and whether that name matches the tenant named in the lease.
3. The file reaches one of four recorded positions on section 38A and names the documents it rests on: both warning notice and declaration supplied, contracting out claimed with no declaration supplied, no contracting out found on the documents supplied, or cannot be stated from documents supplied.
4. Every notice window in the calendar is expressed as two dates, the earliest and the latest, calculated from a date that appears in a supplied document.
5. Each of the seven section 30(1) grounds appears in the grounds table with a note on what the landlord would have to establish, and no ground is marked as likely or unlikely.
6. The compensation record states the rateable value used, the valuation list it was read from, the occupation history over the preceding fourteen years and which multiple follows, or states plainly that the fourteen year condition cannot be tested from the information supplied.

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. Scotland has no equivalent of Part II of the 1954 Act; a Scottish shop tenant's statutory route is an application to the sheriff under the Tenancy of Shops (Scotland) Act 1949, which must be made "not later than the expiry of twenty-one days after the service of the notice" and can produce a renewal "for such period, not exceeding one year". Northern Ireland runs its own regime under the Business Tenancies (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, with applications to the Lands Tribunal. If the premises are outside England and Wales, say so and stop.
- Never draft, serve or send a statutory notice. Section 25 notices, section 26 requests and section 40 notices are prescribed forms with legal consequences for getting them wrong, and they are served by the owner's solicitor. This skill prepares the facts and the dates that the solicitor needs.
- Never state a rent as a percentage of turnover, or any other benchmark, as a test of whether a renewal is worth taking. No published figure exists for a single independent UK venue, and an owner who walks away from a renewal because a borrowed percentage says the rent is high has given up a statutory right on the strength of somebody else's portfolio.
- Never record a landlord's stated intention under ground (f) or (g) as established. Intention is a matter of evidence tested in court, and an owner who accepts an assertion of redevelopment at face value loses both the tenancy and the argument about compensation.
- Never let the contractual expiry date pass without a recorded decision. Under section 24 the tenancy continues, but the deadlines that follow a notice are short, and the most expensive thing an owner can do is nothing.
- Never treat the two month floor on applications after a section 26 request as a reason to delay. The floor and the ceiling are different dates and the ceiling is the one that ends the right.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's own solicitor and chartered surveyor to check. It applies published statute to dates and facts the owner supplied. It is not legal advice, it is not a valuation, and it is not a finding that any tenancy is or is not protected.

## Built from
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 23, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/23, read 23 September 2026: the occupation for business purposes test and the definition of business, in step 1.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 43, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/43, read 23 September 2026: the excluded tenancies and the six month and twelve month rules, in step 2.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 38A, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/38A, read 23 September 2026, and The Regulatory Reform (Business Tenancies) (England and Wales) Order 2003, Schedules 1 to 4, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/3096/schedules/made, read 23 September 2026: contracting out and the 14 day rule, in step 3.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 24, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/24, read 23 September 2026: the continuation of the tenancy, in step 4.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 25, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/25, read 23 September 2026, and section 26, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/26, read 23 September 2026: the two notice routes and their twelve and six month windows, in step 5.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 30, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/30, read 23 September 2026: the seven grounds of opposition, in step 6.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 37, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/37, read 23 September 2026: compensation on grounds (e), (f) and (g) and the fourteen year condition, in step 7.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 29A, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/29A, read 23 September 2026: the statutory period and the agreed extension, in step 8.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, section 40, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1954/56/section/40, read 23 September 2026: the duty to give information and the one month reply, in step 10.
- Tenancy of Shops (Scotland) Act 1949, section 1, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/25/section/1, read 23 September 2026, and Business Tenancies (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/nisi/1996/725/contents, read 23 September 2026: the jurisdiction rule.

# renewal-rights

## You are given
The facts of one business tenancy of premises in England or Wales held by a UK independent hospitality business. The country the premises sit in, as confirmed by the owner. The lease term commencement date, the contractual expiry date, the length of term as granted, and whether the term was a term of years certain, a term of years certain followed by a period from year to year, or a periodic tenancy. The occupation history: who is in occupation, the exact legal name of the occupier, the date occupation began, every earlier occupier of the same business with their dates, and the owner's statement of whether the occupier is the tenant named in the lease, a company the tenant controls or a person who controls the tenant company. The contracting out papers where they exist: the date of the landlord's warning notice, the type of declaration made, its date, and the date the lease was completed. Any notice already served by either party, with its date of service, the date specified in it, and its content verbatim. The rateable value of the holding with the valuation list it was read from and the date that list came into force. The premises use and whether any part is residential. Every judgement call, including whether to renew, whether to move and whether to instruct a solicitor, has already been made by the owner and is supplied to you.

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

1. `eligibility.md` recording, on separate lines and nothing else: the country the premises sit in; the name of the occupier and the date occupation began; whether that name matches the tenant named in the lease, stated as `matches`, `does not match` or `not stated`; the length of the term as granted; whether any exclusion in section 43 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 was reported by Claude as applying, naming which; where the term certain did not exceed six months, the total occupation period including any predecessor in the same business and whether it exceeds twelve months; and a closing line stating the recorded position as exactly one of `Part II applies on the facts supplied`, `Part II excluded by section 43`, `Part II excluded by a valid section 38A agreement on the papers supplied`, `contracting out claimed, papers not supplied` or `cannot be stated from the information supplied`. Every line names the document or the owner's answer it came from. This line is copied from Claude's supplied finding and is never decided by you.
2. `contracting-out.csv` with these columns in this order: `item`, `date`, `source_document`, `days_to_completion`, `supplied`. One row for each of `landlord warning notice`, `simple declaration`, `statutory declaration`, `lease completion`, `lease recital of exclusion`. `supplied` is `yes` or `no`. `days_to_completion` is the whole number of days between that item's date and the lease completion date, and is left empty where either date is missing. Every row with `supplied` reading `no` is listed in `gaps.md`.
3. `notice-windows.csv` with columns: `route`, `party_who_may_serve`, `earliest_date`, `latest_date`, `anchor_date`, `anchor_date_source`, `statutory_reference`, `available_on_facts_supplied`. `route` is exactly one of `section 25 notice not opposing`, `section 25 notice opposing`, `section 26 request`, `section 27(1) tenant notice`, `section 27(2) tenant notice`, `section 40 information notice by tenant`, `section 40 information notice by landlord`. `available_on_facts_supplied` is `yes`, `no` or `cannot be stated`. No window is written where the anchor date was not supplied from a document.
4. `grounds.csv` with columns: `ground`, `statutory_wording_verbatim`, `what_the_landlord_must_establish`, `discretionary`, `compensation_payable_if_sole_ground`, `facts_supplied_relevant_to_this_ground`. One row for each of `30(1)(a)`, `30(1)(b)`, `30(1)(c)`, `30(1)(d)`, `30(1)(e)`, `30(1)(f)`, `30(1)(g)`. `discretionary` is `yes` or `no`. `compensation_payable_if_sole_ground` is `yes` or `no`. `what_the_landlord_must_establish` is copied from the text Claude supplies and is never composed by you. `facts_supplied_relevant_to_this_ground` records only facts the owner supplied, with no assessment of how likely the ground is to succeed.
5. `compensation.md` recording, on separate lines and nothing else: the rateable value of the holding; the valuation list it was read from and the date that list came into force; whether any part of the holding is domestic property; the date the current tenancy terminates or would terminate; the fourteen year period that precedes it, stated as two dates; each period of business occupation within that fourteen years with its occupier and dates; whether the occupation was continuous throughout; the multiple that follows, stated as `rateable value`, `twice the rateable value` or `cannot be stated from the information supplied`; and the resulting figure before the appropriate multiplier, or the words `multiplier not supplied` where it was not.
6. `deadline.md` a file of at most six lines: the statutory period end date calculated from the date specified in the section 25 notice or the date specified in the section 26 request; which of those two it was calculated from; the source document; the words `an application to the court made after this date cannot be entertained`; the words `any agreement under section 29B to extend this period must be in writing and must be made before this date`; and the earliest date on which an application may be made where a section 26 request has been served. Where no notice has been served, the file contains one line saying no statutory period has started and names that in `gaps.md`.
7. `solicitor-questions.md` a numbered list. Each item is at most three sentences: the fact found, its source, and one question. Nothing in this file offers an opinion on the answer.
8. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every contracting out item not supplied; every notice window that could not be dated; every ground with no facts supplied against it; every element of the compensation calculation that could not be established; the absence of a served notice where none exists; any date supplied by the owner without a source document; and any occupier name that does not match the tenant named in the lease.

## Rules
- Codex records, counts and dates. It never decides whether Part II applies, never decides whether a contracting out agreement is valid, never assesses the strength of a ground of opposition, never advises whether to renew and never drafts or fills in a statutory form.
- Never compute a notice window from a date the owner supplied without a document. Anchor dates come from the lease, from a served notice or from a Land Registry entry, and anything else leaves the window empty and goes in `gaps.md`.
- Never round or estimate a rateable value, and never take one from memory. It is copied from the valuation list entry supplied, together with the date that list came into force.
- Never write that a ground is weak, strong, likely or unlikely. The grounds table records the statutory wording, what must be established and the facts supplied, and nothing else.
- Never write a market rent, a rent per square foot, a rent as a percentage of turnover or any comparison with other premises into any file. No such benchmark exists for a single independent UK venue and none is to be recorded. Rent on a renewal is a separate exercise for a chartered surveyor.
- Never apply an England and Wales rule to premises outside England and Wales. If the country field is Scotland or Northern Ireland, write only `eligibility.md` with the country line and one line saying the jurisdiction is out of scope, plus a `gaps.md` saying the same, and stop.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dash characters in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every statutory quotation and every quotation from a served notice 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 solicitor and chartered surveyor to check before any notice is served or any deadline is relied on. It is not legal advice and it is not a valuation.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the closing position line from `eligibility.md` quoted in full, the number of contracting out items recorded as not supplied and which ones, every dated notice window in `notice-windows.csv` listed as route with its earliest and latest dates, the count of grounds carrying compensation if raised alone, the multiple recorded in `compensation.md` with the rateable value and the valuation list date it rests on, the statutory period end date from `deadline.md` with the document it was calculated from or the words no notice served, the number of questions in `solicitor-questions.md`, and the `gaps.md` item count.