Commercial Landlord looking to increase rent and back date 4 years. Any advice

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12 Feb 2006
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Surrey
Our agreement has in place rent reviews every x years, with break out clause if we wanted at the same time. The landlord missed both the last 2, however now has a bee in his bonnet and wants to increase the rent twice, by almost 100%, and back date it.

now that's fine it's his decision, however we'd not have agreed to either of the rent increases, especially as it would have been during covid, and the landlord has installed other tenants in the building that are so noisey that it's impossible to use the site as an office now, so we just use it for storage, which was fine at the lower rates, but not at these increased ones.

I guess i'm a bit nieve with this as all the 12 odd years we've been here, it's never been an issue, and the place was low price, but extremelly low quality in what it was, and low fuss due to the landlord being much more casual over that time e.g. the last rent review, the landlord come to us, sat down and just said, I want to increase the rent by 20%, starting in 2 months done.

now he's got another company invovled and it's a different story.

I wondered if anyone has any experience with a situation like this? For us to leave is no issue, we can find a storage location for cheaper than what we currently pay, it's just that they are trying to back date, and say as the dates have passed, we can't leave, but he can increase to whatever he felt is correct for those dates.
 
Just depends on what your lease says. Looks like it can be a clause in a commercial lease.
yeah i've seen the clause and don't disput they can back date, the issue is more than i'd just have left if they had increased, and i'd leave now going forward, but as the break options which were at the same time as the rent reviews, they weren't done, they say we can't now break until 2025 start.

that's what seems wrong to me.
 
After seeing the insanity of this, I would recommend you go to a Lawyer. Take all your correspondent regarding rent review if there was any for the 2 that were missed.

If you are lucky, they may find a legal way for you to squeeze out of this arrangement.
My concern is that a lawyer will charge like £3k just to fight it.
 
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