The Court of Appeal recently considered whether the expressions used in simple declarations made by the tenant in order to exclude its tenancies from the security of tenure provisions in the LTA had satisfied the requirement for the declarations to be “in the form, or substantially in the form” prescribed by the regulations. If the declarations did not satisfy that test they would be void and the tenancies created by the leases would benefit from the security of tenure provisions of the LTA.

The prescribed form of simple declaration in legislation includes the words “for a term commencing on…”. Does this mean that declarations have to state the date upon which the proprietary interest commences or is it simply intended to identify the lease in question?

The Court of Appeal determined that the purpose of the wording in the statutory declaration is to identify the tenancy in respect of which the notice is given. On that basis, the commonly used wording for declarations, being “the date on which the tenancy is granted” was sufficient.

The decision of the Court of Appeal is welcomed and provides assurance that it is not necessary to insert a specific date into declarations (which is often unknown when declarations are made) and that alternative commonly used expressions which refer to the term commencement date will not invalidate a tenant’s declaration.

TFS Stores Limited v Designer Retail Outlet Centres (Mansfield) General Partner Limited [2021] EWCA Civ 688