Source · Select Committees · Business and Trade Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Deferred
The Government should use the time afforded by current time-limited support measures wisely to identify...
Recommendation
The Government should use the time afforded by current time-limited support measures wisely to identify long-term solutions. The Government should consider active measures to address the issue of growing commercial rent arrears, and proactively work with businesses, landlords, banks and other stakeholders to identify an appropriate long-term solution. (Paragraph 51) Moving forward
Government response summary AI-generated
The government described existing tenant protection measures and announced a Call for Evidence on commercial rents and COVID-19 to identify long-term solutions, including options for mediation or adjudication of rent disputes.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
57. The tenant protection measures introduced by the Coronavirus Act 2020 and the Corporate Insolvency & Governance Act 2020 are designed to give tenant businesses protection from the threat of eviction, and aggressive debt recovery practices at a time when many have been unable to trade normally. The Government has stressed throughout the pandemic the need for landlords and tenants to work together to resolve issues of accumulated rent arrears and ongoing lease terms. To aid these discussions, the Government published the voluntary Code of Practice in June 2020 to guide landlords and tenants in how to conduct such negotiations. This was recently supplemented with additional guidance on how tenant businesses should frame negotiations with their landlords. The Code of Practice and additional guidance can be seen here www.gov.uk/ government/publications/code-of-practice-for-the-commercial-property-sector.
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