It will no doubt come as a great relief to my tenants and lessees throughout the country to learn that the rent moratorium has now been extended by a further nine months to March 2022.

What this means is that tenants cannot be chucked out for non-payment of rent, although there still some other remedies available to landlords which may come into play. However, welcome though this relief will be, does it really sort out the problem? The debt remains due and all that is happening is that it is building up and getting bigger and bigger.

At the moment we do not know whether the lockdown will be lifted in July or not. What is more is that things are still changing and we do not know whether the third wave of new cases will continue to increase exponentially or whether it will start to level out. At the moment it shows no sign of levelling out at all.

But there is another unknown. There is no certainty that once the lockdown is lifted all businesses are automatically going to return to profitability. Many will no doubt but it is unlikely to be like it was pre-pandemic because there is still the small matter of public confidence and unfortunately the hospitality industry in its quest to get the lockdown lifted forgets all the time to consider the interests of its customers.

In Europe the UK comes second in the list of the number of new cases by country, second only to Russia. So once again the UK more or less leads the fray.

The government intends to introduce a form of arbitration scheme to try and resolve these rent issues but it is not known how this will work.

Of course landlords who chuck out all their tenants might find they have a lot of empty units – the law of unintended consequences!

Hang in there and just do your best to build up trade once you are fully open and in the meanwhile if you can make some payments on account of your rent, the government says you should.

Adrian Leopard 17-06-21

Photo Heidi Fin