Tenant insolvency – landlord’s obligation for empty property rates

Schroder Exempt Property Unit Trust and another v Birmingham City Council [2014] EWHC 2207 (Admin) (Hickinbottom J) (10 July 2014)

In our February 2014 edition, Commercial Leases [2014] Volume 28 Issue 1 at p2020, we summarised a number of recent decisions focussing on what was meant by ‘occupation’ so as to give rise to an obligation on a landlord to discharge business rates on empty property. The issue surfaces again in this case where the tenant became insolvent and the liquidator disclaimed the lease.