Why We Must Respond to the Business Tenancies Consultation

The Law Commission’s Business Tenancies Consultation is a rare opportunity to reshape the legal framework that governs commercial occupation in England and Wales. The Law Commission is consulting on Business Tenancies: the right to renew.

Yet the people who stand to be most affected are often the least likely to respond: one-person businesses, family-run shops, independent traders, charities and single-property landlords. These are the occupiers who keep our high streets functioning, but who rarely have the time or resources to engage with complex legal reform.

That is precisely why we must respond.

This consultation is not just a technical legal exercise. It is a moment when the voices of smaller occupiers need to be heard clearly. If responses are dominated by large landlords, institutional investors and national operators, there is a risk that the resulting law will reflect their priorities rather than the experience of the smaller businesses and landlords who also have to operate within it.

Smaller occupiers deserve a legal framework that reflects their reality — and responding is, in many ways, a moral responsibility.

The proposals raise real concerns for small occupiers

Several of the provisional proposals highlight structural difficulties which can disproportionately affect small tenants and single-property landlords.

Uncertainty around periodic tenancies

The consultation considers the treatment of periodic tenancies as part of the future scope of the 1954 Act.

For smaller occupiers, who may be more likely to rely upon informal or rolling arrangements, changes in this area need particular care. The legal consequences of remaining in occupation should be sufficiently clear for ordinary landlords and tenants to understand.

The law should, so far as possible, reflect what reasonable contracting parties expect rather than creating consequences which only those with specialist legal advice are likely to appreciate.

Contracting-out procedures that burden tenants

Contracting out of the security of tenure provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 gives landlords and tenants valuable commercial flexibility.

But the procedure also involves warnings, declarations and formal requirements which may be much more familiar to professional landlords and national businesses than to an individual opening their first shop or taking premises for a small business.

A national retailer is unlikely accidentally to surrender statutory protection without understanding what it is doing. A one-person business is much more vulnerable to doing so.

Simplification is therefore welcome, but it must not come at the expense of ensuring that tenants genuinely understand when they are giving up security of tenure.

Complexity nearly always affects those with the fewest resources most severely.

Risk of accidental loss of rights

The interaction between fixed-term and periodic occupation also demonstrates why clarity matters.

Small businesses do not necessarily take legal advice every time the legal character of their occupation changes. Equally, a single-property landlord may have no intention of creating or removing statutory protection but may not appreciate the consequences of allowing an occupational arrangement to continue.

The law should not unnecessarily create traps for either side.

If statutory protection is to apply — or cease to apply — the consequences should be as clear and predictable as possible.

Responding is a moral act

Small businesses are not simply economic units.

They are community anchors. Independent shops, cafés, tradespeople, professional practices and family businesses provide employment, maintain our high streets and contribute to the character and economic life of their communities.

Individual and small-scale landlords are also part of that landscape and should not be overlooked when commercial property law is reformed.

Engaging with the consultation is therefore about more than technical drafting. It is about standing up for:

• fairness;
• clarity;
• protection for independent occupiers; and
• a level playing field.

If smaller occupiers and landlords do not respond, the consultation will inevitably be shaped primarily by those who do.

Their voices deserve to be heard alongside those of institutional landlords, major property interests and national occupiers.

A final thought

This consultation is not just about leases.

It is about the balance between flexibility and security, the accessibility of the law, and the future legal framework within which businesses occupy the premises from which they earn their livelihoods.

The people who keep our communities functioning deserve a system which reflects their reality.

That requires those of us with experience of how the system operates in practice to engage with the reform process — and to encourage the businesses and landlords affected by it to do the same.

The Law Commission’s second consultation on reform of Part 2 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 closes on 16 September 2026.

Respond to the Law Commission consultation

Related article: Business Tenancies: Why the Law Commission’s Proposed Reforms Matter