Lina Mattsson and Jamal Demachkie assess what a tenant should do when faced with a request for access.
“The Tenant shall permit the Landlord access to the Premises” - virtually all leases will contain a tenant covenant along these lines, but what precisely does it mean? What steps must a tenant take when faced with a request for access? In spite of the frequency with which these questions arise, they have not been subject to a binding authority until now.
In Dorrington Residential Ltd v 56 Clifton Gardens Ltd [2022] UKUT 266 (LC), the Upper Tribunal provided the answer. In doing so, it also dealt with questions concerning the validity of a request for access and the timing of such a request in the context of the Covid pandemic.
The facts
The tenant, Dorrington, owned the long lease ...