New guidance has been published aimed at assisting commercial landlords and their business tenants settle unpaid rent arising from the Coronavirus emergency.

Part of the Government response to the emergency was a moratorium on commercial landlords evicting tenants struggling to pay their rent. ‘We stopped landlords seizing stock owned by the tenant in lieu of rent, so that businesses in rent arrears were not forced to go to the wall by their landlord’, explained Parliamentary Under Secretaries Neil O’Brien and Paul Scully in a foreword to the guidance.

The Commercial rent code of practice, which replaces a previous version published last November, will help ‘ensure that our local high streets and businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors can leave the challenges of the past two years behind and fully share in the economic recovery that lies ahead’, say the ministers.

It provides a code of practice aligned with the Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Act 2022, outlining what is statutory for those within its scope and how the statutory arbitration will work.

‘Where they can afford to do so, the code states that a tenant should meet their obligations under their lease in full. It makes clear that a tenant can’t keep the doors of their business open if it comes at the expense of the landlord’s solvency.

‘However, tenants should not have to take on more debt – or restructure their business – in order to pay their rent’.