The rent is not in the letter. It is in the assumptions, and you agreed to them years ago.

Almost certainly not, and this is the single most misunderstood thing in commercial property right now. The ban is genuine and it is on the statute book: section 100 and Schedule 37 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and inserts new section 54A and Schedules 7A and 7B into the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. It works elegantly — it does not void the clause, it caps the reviewed rent at what paragraph 8 calls the “reference amount”, which for an ordinary open market clause is the open market rent. Paragraph 9(3) strikes out the “higher of” limb to that extent and paragraph 9(4) substitutes the reference amount, so the rent becomes the market rent and can fall below the passing rent. But two things stop it helping you. First, it is not in force. Section 100 and Schedule 37 are not in the list at section 108(5) that commenced two months after Royal Assent, so they fall into section 108(6) — commencement “on such day or days as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint”. No commencement regulations have been made and no date has been announced. Second, and decisively even when it does commence, paragraph 6(1)(c) of Schedule 7A confines it to a tenancy granted, or varied so as to include caught review terms, after the Schedule came into force. An existing lease with an existing upward-only clause is completely unaffected. Be warned about where you will read otherwise. Because the amending Act has Royal Assent, legislation.gov.uk already displays Schedules 7A and 7B within the text of the 1954 Act, annotated as inserted on 29 April 2026. Anyone landing on that page will reasonably think the ban is live. It is not.

Two things, and one of them matters if you are negotiating anything new. The 17 March 2026 hook. Paragraph 6(2) of Schedule 7A protects “pre-commencement arrangements”, but paragraph 6(3) takes that protection away where the tenancy is granted under a “tenancy renewal arrangement” — defined in Schedule 7B to cover agreements for lease, contractual options to renew, and put and call options — entered into on or after 17 March 2026. It is an anti-avoidance provision, designed to stop parties parking a lease in an agreement for lease and completing after commencement. The practical consequence is worth knowing: a lease granted today may lawfully contain an upward-only review for its own term, but if it contains an option to renew, the lease granted under that option will be caught. The same logic catches a new tenancy ordered on a statutory renewal under Part II of the 1954 Act determined after commencement. The variation point. Paragraph 6(1)(c)(ii) catches an existing tenancy that is later varied so as to introduce caught review terms after commencement. So if you are regearing an old lease after the ban commences, the varied lease can be pulled into the regime — which cuts in your favour and is a reason to think carefully about the timing of a regear. What is caught, and what is not. Open market upward-only reviews are the core target. Index-linked reviews with a collar at the passing rent are caught, as are turnover rents and rents set by reference to the rents of other premises. Stepped rents agreed at the outset are not caught at all, because the rent is known and determinable at grant, so paragraph 7 is not satisfied. Agricultural holdings, farm business tenancies and mining leases are outside it. The Secretary of State can create exceptions by affirmative regulations under paragraph 10; none have been made.

Almost certainly not, and assuming otherwise is how tenants end up with an unexpected five-figure demand. Since United Scientific Holdings Ltd v Burnley Borough Council [1978] AC 904 in the House of Lords there is a rebuttable presumption that time is not of the essence of the timetable in a rent review clause. The reasoning imports the equitable rule about stipulations as to time in contracts concerning land. So a landlord who serves a trigger notice late — even years late — can generally still operate the review, the new rent takes effect from the review date, and the difference is backdated. The exceptions are narrow. Express words (“time shall be of the essence”) are decisive. A deeming provision is decisive — see the next answer. A break clause genuinely linked to the review timetable displaces the presumption, because you need to know the reviewed rent before deciding whether to break; the mere existence of a break somewhere in the lease is not enough. And there are occasional contra-indications in the drafting: in Lancecrest v Asiwaju the Court of Appeal held that where time is made strict for some steps and the clause is silent as to others, that selectivity indicates the remaining limits were not intended to be strict. What this means practically. Provision for the increase from the review date rather than treating the delay as a windfall. A very long delay can in principle raise arguments of estoppel or abandonment, but they rarely succeed and you should not plan on them. And note the incentive structure, which is asymmetric by design: delay costs the landlord nothing and costs you a lump sum.

Find out whether your clause contains a deeming provision, and what the deadline is. Today, before you reply to anything. This is the only part of a rent review that cannot be fixed afterwards. A deeming provision is wording to the effect that if you do not serve a counter-notice within a stated period, you are deemed to have agreed the rent specified in the landlord’s notice. In Starmark Enterprises Ltd v CPL Distribution Ltd [2001] EWCA Civ 1252; [2002] Ch 306 the Court of Appeal held that such a provision is a sufficient contra-indication to rebut the United Scientific presumption, so time is of the essence for the counter-notice — and it held the earlier decision to the contrary, Mecca Leisure v Renown Investments, to have been wrongly decided. The tenant in Starmark served late and was bound by the landlord’s figure. There is no relief, no discretion and no valuation argument left. Search the whole lease — not just the review clause, because it is frequently in the definitions — for “deemed”, “shall be treated as having agreed” and “conclusive”. If there is one, serve the counter-notice. It is usually a single paragraph. It normally needs to be in writing, served in the manner and on the party the lease specifies, and to do no more than state that you do not agree the proposed rent and require the review to be determined. It generally does not need to contain your own figure, and putting one in prematurely can cost you. Serve it, then argue about value. If you have already missed the deadline, take advice today: the remaining arguments are usually about whether the landlord’s own notice was valid — its form, its content, whether it was served on the right party at the right address — and those must be raised at once.

In the assumptions and disregards, which you agreed to years ago and have probably never read. A rent review is a valuation of a hypothetical letting whose terms your clause dictates. The starting point is the presumption of reality — Basingstoke and Deane BC v Host Group Ltd [1988] 1 WLR 348, where Nicholls LJ said the valuer achieves the purpose of the clause “if, but only if, he assesses the up-to-date rent on the same terms (other than as to quantum of rent) as the terms still subsisting between the parties”. Hoffmann LJ restated it in 1995: absent clear contrary words, the hypothetical letting is of the premises as they actually are, on the terms of the actual lease, in the circumstances as they actually exist. It is a presumption of construction, not a rule of law — it means a landlord-favourable assumption is read narrowly and ambiguity resolves against the landlord, but clear words win. The four places the money sits. An assumption that any rent-free period has expired — see below, this is the biggest. An assumption that the premises are fit for immediate occupation and use, which removes the discount a hypothetical tenant would get for having to fit out; that discount is real, and 99 Bishopsgate v Prudential Assurance is the authority for it. The disregard of tenant’s improvements, or its absence, or its destruction by a badly drafted licence to alter. And the assumed term, where the default is the unexpired residue and clear words are needed to displace it — though which way that moves the rent depends entirely on how the assumed term compares with the market-standard term in your sector, and no authority supports a fixed percentage for any of this. Anyone quoting you one is guessing.

It is the most expensive line in most modern review clauses, and it is worth understanding precisely. In a real letting an incoming tenant is given a rent-free period. Part of it compensates for lost use while fitting out. Part of it, in a weak market, is a pure inducement — a way of keeping the headline rent up for the landlord’s valuation and lending purposes while the tenant’s effective rent, spread over the term, is much lower. A headline rent assumption tells the valuer to assume any rent-free period has expired, or to disregard concessions in the comparables. The effect is that you pay from day one a rent that in the real market would only ever be paid after a substantial free period — and you get no free period, because you are already in occupation. What it cost in the leading case. In Broadgate Square plc v Lehman Brothers Ltd the arbitrator found a total rent-free period of thirty months at the December 1991 review — six months for fitting out and twenty-four as an inducement. The headline construction took the rent from £5,281,365 to £7,033,316 a year, an uplift of about a third. Same building, same market, same day. But read the whole picture, because it is much better for tenants than that number suggests. Broadgate Square was one of four appeals heard together in the Court of Appeal, all reported at [1995] 1 EGLR 97, and it is the only one of the four in which the landlord won. In Co-operative Wholesale Society v National Westminster Bank, Scottish Amicable v Middleton Potts and Prudential Nominees v Greenham Trading the tenants won. The governing principle is Hoffmann LJ’s: absent unambiguous language, a rent review clause should not be construed as requiring a headline rent. Simon Brown LJ put it more strongly — “only the most unambiguous of such clauses could properly be found to bear the landlord’s construction”. So the exact wording matters enormously and most clauses do not achieve it. This is worth arguing.

You do, unless the clause says otherwise — and even where it does, there are four ways to lose it. Start with the warning case. In Ponsford v HMS Aerosols Ltd [1979] AC 63 the House of Lords held that where the review clause required “a reasonable rent for the demised premises” with no disregard of improvements, the tenant paid rent on the value of works it had paid for itself — there, after reinstating the building following a fire. If there is no express disregard, there is no disregard. That is the single most important sentence for a tenant reading their own clause, and the disregard is often in the definitions section rather than the review clause, so search the whole lease. The four traps where a disregard exists but does not save you. First, works done in pursuance of an obligation to the immediate landlord are not disregarded — that is the standard formula, copied from section 34(1)(c) of the 1954 Act. Second, and this is the one tenants walk into routinely: a licence to alter that merely permits works leaves the disregard intact, but one drafted so that you covenant to carry out and complete them converts a voluntary improvement into an obligation and destroys it. Dig out every licence and read the operative covenant. Third, works carried out before the term began — typically fitting out under an agreement for lease — are not carried out during the tenancy and are not disregarded: Hambros Bank v Superdrug Stores. You pay for the fit-out, then pay rent on it for the rest of the term. Fourth, a disregard limited to improvements made “during the term of this lease” excludes everything done under an earlier lease of the same premises, which quietly hands the landlord decades of your capital expenditure where you have occupied across successive leases.

It depends, and usually you do not get to choose — the lease specifies. The differences are real. An arbitrator acts judicially under the Arbitration Act 1996 and decides on the evidence and submissions the parties put in. They may not rely on their own knowledge without putting it to the parties. They are immune from suit under section 29, their award can be challenged only narrowly under sections 67, 68 and 69 with a 28-day limit, and they have power to award costs under section 61. An independent expert acts investigatively under the lease alone. They use their own knowledge, make their own enquiries and reach their own view, and they will produce a figure even if one side does not engage. They are not immune and can be sued for negligence — that is Arenson v Casson Beckman — but their determination is otherwise effectively final: the only route of challenge is a material departure from their instructions, and a mistake within jurisdiction binds. They usually have no power to award your costs unless the lease gives it. For a tenant, roughly: arbitration suits you where you have a strong case and good evidence, where there is a point of law in issue, or where you want the chance to recover costs if you win. Expert determination suits you where the sums are small relative to costs, where you are under-resourced and would benefit from an investigator, or where you fear a costs award against you. The two asymmetries to weigh: an expert’s determination is final even if wrong, which is a genuine risk; and arbitration’s costs-shifting cuts both ways, so a weak case referred to arbitration can leave you paying the landlord’s costs as well as your own. Note also the Arbitration Act 2025, in force from 1 August 2025, which added a power to decide a hopeless point summarily — but it did not amend sections 68 or 69, so the challenge position is unchanged.

Two published figures, and after that nobody publishes anything. The RICS appointment fee for a commercial rent review arbitrator or independent expert is £425, paid with form DRS1. RICS does not state whether that is inclusive of VAT, so do not assume it is. Appointment is made by or on behalf of the President of RICS, and RICS states it is named in around 99% of commercial leases. RICS publishes no appointment timescale, so treat any figure you are given for that as practitioner experience rather than a service standard. The one genuinely cheap route, and it is barely advertised. The RICS Small Business Scheme for Rent Reviews is a fixed-fee independent expert determination. To qualify: rateable value under £10,000, or £15,000 in London; the tenant holds no more than two non-residential properties; the dispute is one of pure valuation with no legal issues; and both parties agree to use it. The cost is an appointment fee of £100 plus VAT and an expert’s fee of up to £750 plus VAT, negotiable, giving a maximum of £510 per party including VAT. The expert investigates independently; you may put in your own evidence but they are not bound by it; and if the other side does not co-operate the expert can still decide. Beyond those two figures, there is no published data at all — no scale of arbitrators’ fees, no published surveyors’ fees, no data on typical cost or duration. RICS abolished mandatory fee scales decades ago. Any range you are quoted is trade convention. The right comparison is the sum at stake across the whole period until the next review or the end of the lease, not one year’s difference — that is how most tenants talk themselves out of a review worth having. And remember that in an arbitration costs usually follow the event.

No, and it is one of the more useful things on this page. For any commercial property in England and Wales you can see the full rating list summary valuation free at gov.uk, with no sign-in and no account: floor areas line by line, the basis of measurement, the adopted base rate in pounds per square metre, every percentage adjustment with its description, and the total. The whole dataset is also downloadable in bulk, free, with an API. That matters because the Valuation Office builds those figures from actual rents collected under statutory compulsion — rental information requests under the Local Government Finance Act 1988, with a 56-day deadline and a penalty for non-return. So the adopted rate for your street is a distillation of real transactional evidence. Be honest about its limits. It is at the antecedent valuation date of 1 April 2024, not your review date. The rating hypothesis is not the lease hypothesis — rating assumes a yearly tenancy on repairing terms, vacant and to let, which is not what your clause assumes. It is a valuer’s opinion rather than a transaction, so it sits well down the RICS hierarchy of comparable evidence, and many assessments are settled in bulk. It does not show the underlying rents or the comparables’ lease terms. What it is genuinely good for: establishing your own floor area, establishing the relativities the Valuation Office has adopted between your unit and the one the landlord is quoting — quantum allowances, return frontage, floor level, shape — and sanity-checking any pounds per square foot figure. Those relativities are frequently the whole argument. Then add: registered leases of comparable units from HM Land Registry for about £18 each, since leases over seven years are compulsorily registrable and anyone can order a copy; the EPC register for free floor areas; local planning applications for floor area schedules and refit dates; and agents’ quoting rents on empty units nearby, which are weak evidence but free and awkward for a landlord whose own agent is quoting less next door.

Ask them to prove it with lettings evidence, because the published data is flatter than most opening figures assume — and it depends enormously on your sector. The best broad measure is the rating revaluation, because the Valuation Office builds it from actual rents. Between the 2017 list (valued as at 1 April 2015) and the 2026 list (valued as at 1 April 2024), rateable values across England and Wales rose about 54% for industrial and were essentially flat for retail — which against inflation over the same nine years is a very large real-terms fall. Offices rose modestly. At the 2023 revaluation, large food stores were the only retail category that increased; general shops and retail warehouses all declined. So industrial rose roughly 56% relative to retail over nine years. Two caveats stated by the Valuation Office itself: the aggregate change is not strictly like-for-like, because properties enter, leave, split and merge between lists; and the valuation dates are 2015, 2021 and 2024, so this series cannot give you a 2019 base. Independently, the Office for National Statistics series for rental and operating services of real estate stood at 106.2 in 2019 and about 107.3 in 2026 — roughly one per cent in seven years. That series measures rent passing rather than open market value, covers under a third of the market by value and is biased towards London and better-quality investment stock, so treat it as a headline rather than a sector argument. The industry valuation index reported rental value growth “still positive but slowing” in early 2026, but does not publish sector-level rental growth percentages in its public material — so anyone quoting you a precise figure from it is either a subscriber or making it up. None of this decides your review. Your street is not a national index. It does mean an assertion that the market has moved sharply should be evidenced rather than asserted.

Start with an uncomfortable fact: there is almost no regulation of rent review advice. A rent review negotiation is an “excepted valuation” under the RICS Red Book — excepted from the requirements on terms of engagement, bases of value, inspections and reporting. Only the ethics and competence rules bite, and only if your adviser is an RICS member. About eleven per cent of RICS members are Registered Valuers. And there is no statutory backstop: although the Estate Agents Act 1979 does cover commercial property, the redress scheme requirement applies to residential work only, so a badly-advised commercial tenant has no ombudsman and no regulator — only a negligence claim. On conflicts: the absolute ban on dual agency applies to investment agency and expressly excludes lettings and landlord and tenant work. So a firm acting for both landlords and tenants in your town is not prohibited from acting; it needs your informed consent, which means being told the specific nature of the conflict, not a boilerplate paragraph. Ask directly whether they act for landlords in your market and what information barriers exist. Note the structural own-interest conflict too: a firm whose revenue comes mainly from landlord instructions has an interest in the level at which rents settle, because every settlement becomes a comparable it will use again. Our fees. £450 for the clause audit and evidence pack — every assumption and disregard identified and priced directionally with the authority that governs it, the improvements position checked against your licences to alter, and the rating comparables pulled and analysed. £1,450 fixed to negotiate through to settlement, so our incentive is to settle it well rather than keep it running. And £350 if you qualify for the RICS Small Business Scheme, because it would be indefensible to charge you £1,450 to prepare for a determination capped at £510 a side. The counter-notice question is free. Send us a photograph of the clause and we will tell you the same day whether there is a deeming provision, because if there is, nothing else matters until it is dealt with.