Commercial leases generally include clauses which make the tenant responsible for some or all of the repairs and maintenance of the property over the term of the lease. A dilapidation claim is made by the landlord when the tenant has failed to carry out this obligation.

Our Commercial Property team and property dispute solicitors can advise landlords and tenants on what their rights and potential remedies are and whether a potential dilapidation claim exists. The clauses that create dilapidations obligations can be varied and spread throughout the lease. For example, there may be a decorations clause, a maintenance clause, a clause dealing with common parts, a termination clause, a removal clause, an alterations clause or even a specific dilapidations clause and others, all of which can contribute to the tenant’s liability to the landlord. We can identify which clauses are relevant.

We can also identify potential issues, such as where the lease agreement is not clear or where it was drafted before some of the relatively recent and important case law on the subject. Sometimes the various clauses can have real or apparent contradictions or simply be unclear, leading to disputes about how they should be interpreted.

Even where the lease itself seems clear, it can be hard to determine whether any particular repair item is covered or not. And even where the lease and the repairs are clear, there can be questions of what, in all the circumstances of the case, is actually recoverable by the landlord.

Experienced team dealing with complex issues

Our team are experienced in handling the frequent legal issues which arise in dilapidations claims, such as:

when the landlord may be responsible for “extraordinary repairs”
the extent of the true cost to the landlord of repairing the property following the claim
whether “blank cheque” payment clauses are enforceable
whether the landlord has served valid notices in terms of the contract
interpreting the schedule of conditions and the extent to which the property requires further repair.

In most cases, having identified the specific clauses imposing obligations on the tenant, we then instruct surveyors to comment on the condition of the property and the cost of making good.

Resolving disputes

With experience in alternative dispute resolution and a realistic and practical commercial viewpoint, our primary aim is to resolve dilapidation claims before they lead to an expensive court action.

If a court action is necessary then our team have the skills and experience necessary to argue your case in either the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session. For example we successfully represented a tenant in a reported dilapidations claim in the commercial court in Demolition Limited v Healthcare Environmental Services Limited [2017].