Termination of Leases

The correct answer is D. Commercial rent arrears recovery, introduced by Part 3 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, allows the landlord of wholly commercial premises let under a written lease to recover unpaid rent by instructing a certificated enforcement agent to take control of the tenant's goods and sell them, with no court order at any stage. The net unpaid rent must be at least seven days' rent, which £4,500 comfortably exceeds, and the agent must give the tenant at least 14 clear days' notice of enforcement before taking control of the goods (raised from seven clear days on 1 May 2026; the arrears threshold is a separate rule and is unchanged). Only rent in the strict sense can be recovered this way: sums for service charge, insurance or repairs cannot, even where the lease reserves them as rent. The landlord should also understand that using the procedure treats the lease as continuing and so waives any subsisting right to forfeit, which suits a landlord that wants the money rather than the premises.

A is incorrect because the whole point of the procedure is that neither a judgment nor any other court order is required. B is incorrect because there is no such statutory demand procedure, and unpaid rent is already recoverable as a debt. C is incorrect because a landlord cannot take control of goods itself; the procedure must be carried out by a certificated enforcement agent, although the 14 clear days' notice it describes is right. E is incorrect because forfeiture would bring the lease to an end, which is precisely what the landlord wants to avoid.