Office Lease and Licence Agreements
These Office Lease Agreements and Licences have been professionally drafted for use by Landlords granting leases, licences and tenancies at will in respect of office premises.
The documents are easy to use and within the portfolio there are leases and licences which cater for different types of premises and different lengths of term. There are versions of the documents with service charge and without service charge and with rent review and without rent review.
The documents are constructed in Word format, and can be customised to meet your requirements. Please click on the links below to view details.
Office Lease and Licence Agreements is part of Property. Just £38.50 + VAT provides unlimited downloads from Property for 1 year.
Frequently Asked Questions
I want to let out office space, should I grant a lease or a licence?
A lease gives the tenant exclusive possession for a fixed term and normally carries security of tenure under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, so the tenant can seek to renew when it ends. A licence gives only permission to occupy, no estate in land and no security, but it works only where the occupier does not have exclusive possession, for example serviced offices. A court decides by substance not label, so a document called a licence that hands over exclusive possession is really a lease.
How long should the office lease be, and does the length change my legal obligations?
Length drives three things. A lease granted for more than seven years must be registered at HM Land Registry. Rent review is standard on terms of more than five years and usually left out of shorter lets. And Stamp Duty Land Tax, or Land Transaction Tax in Wales, is charged on the net present value of the rent over the whole term, so a longer term means more tax. Simply-Docs splits its office templates into short leases of five years or less and long leases of more than five years for these reasons.
Do I have to give my office tenant the right to stay on at the end of the lease?
By default yes. Business tenancies carry security of tenure under Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, so the tenant can remain after the term ends and apply for a new lease, which you can oppose only on the section 30 grounds. You can let without security, but only if you follow the contracting-out procedure before the lease completes: you serve a prescribed warning notice and the tenant signs a declaration. Many Simply-Docs office leases are offered in a contracted-out version.
What is a service charge version of an office lease and do I need one?
A service charge lets the landlord recover the cost of maintaining shared parts of a building, such as structure, common areas, lifts and security, from the tenants who use them. You need it when you let part of a building and keep responsibility for the common parts, which is why Simply-Docs offers leases of part with a service charge and leases of whole without one. On a lease of a whole building the tenant usually repairs directly, so no service charge is needed.