As I am sure many of you who subscribe to the helpline will be aware, the advice for a Landlord or an agent invoking a break clause to bring about an end to the tenancy agreement is to follow the provisions of the break clause exactly. If this means serving the notice by hand whilst balancing a bowl of water on your head then that is what needs to be done.

The Avocet Industrial Estates case makes clear that this is not just the case for the Landlord and Agent but also the Tenant.

In this case the requirements of the break clause in a 10 year commercial lease, were that the break would be ineffective if “any payment” due under the lease remained unpaid and if a sum equivalent to 6 months rent was due. The day before the break date the tenant handed a cheque for 6 months rent which was due to the Landlord and handed back the keys. The Landlord challenged this claiming that simply handing a cheque does not constitute the amount being paid. This would mean that there were still monies owed at the break date and the break invoked by the Tenant should be ineffective.

The court agreed deeming that a cheque was not legal currency and therefore there was default interest amounting to £130 still owed. This meant that both requirements of the break clause were not satisfied and the Tenant could not rely on the break clause. The court accepted that the result was rather harsh but the decision was based on the legal principle of certainty.

This case simply demonstrates that parties continue to do things without reading the tenancy agreement. On the helpline we often have people that serve section 21s by hand and assume that its deemed served the same day if posted before 4.30pm. However the tenancy agreement states something different, which is that it is deemed served the next day. The section 21 is therefore invalid. This is common and should not be if people just took 10 minutes to read the agreement, assuming you are familiar with it is simply not good enough.