It’s essential to get a description of the premises you are intending to take set out clearly in the lease – so that nothing you expect to be getting is left out, and to avoid any argument about what it is that you have leased.
If you are leasing a building with a postal address, simply using the postal address may be enough. But if it has a forecourt in front or a parking area at the back you would need to have them referred to specifically to make sure they are included, not just the building.
You may be taking all the land the landlords own. In that case, they will have a Land Registry title which sets out exactly what’s included, and then you may be able to adequately describe the property in the lease just by referring to the Land Registry title number.
If it’s not just a stand-alone building, you will probably need a much more detailed description.
If you are taking a lock-up shop, it may be accurate enough to describe the premises you are leasing as “the ground floor lock up shop”.
With offices, if you are taking an entire floor, a description like, “the second floor offices” may appear sufficient, but really it is still necessary to be a bit more specific and say whether the stairs and/or landings are included.
A detailed plan is legally required for leases which have to be registered at the Land Registry – normally leases for more than seven years. But it is usually necessary for any letting of part of a multi-occupational building.
Pulling all this together, the answer to getting the description of the premises in the lease right is a combination of two things: (1) a plan, and (2) an accurate and detailed description.
The traditional plan will show the boundaries of the premises edged red. You will need to check that everything you think you are getting – e.g. cupboards or balconies – are within the red line, and that nothing you do not want included – e.g. the communal stairs – has not accidentally fallen inside the red line.
A detailed written description still has its part to play. The plan has the limitation that it can only show the side to side extent of premises, it can’t deal with issues like how deep into the floor the tenants’ ownership extends, and whether the tenants own the ceiling and the rafters, or whether their ownership stops at the surface of the ceiling.
For example, in a multi-occupational building, it needs to be stated who owns the parts between the upstairs floors and the downstairs ceilings. One option might be that the respective tenants own the plaster board of their ceilings and the floorboards of their floors and the landlords own everything in between. Another option might be that the upstairs office owns the floors and the joists on which they rest, and the downstairs office owns the ceiling below the joists. These will have to be clearly specified, you should make sure you are satisfied about them, because they may well affect what you are responsible for repairing.
These details will be contained in the form of the draft lease the landlord’s solicitors provide to your solicitors, so that’s the stage which you should ask to see it and check that it accurately represents what you’ve agreed to.
In many cases, the landlord retains ownership of all structural parts, and only leases the interior parts of the premises to a tenant.
What if the plan and the written description of the premises differ? There are various forms of traditional wording which are meant to answer that question.
If the lease describes the premises and finishes with the words “… as more particularly described on the plan”, it means that the plan prevails in the case of any uncertainty. If instead the extra words are “… as described on the plan for the purposes of identification only”, it means that the description prevails, not the plan – the plan cannot contradict anything explicitly stated in the description. The best strategy of course is to check both the description and the plan carefully before signing!