Wishing you a forbearing New Year
This article was published by PROPEL INFO here.
Why the worst case scenario doesn’t need to happen for retail and hospitality.
Many of us were looking forward to Christmas as an opportunity to relax after a strange and stressful year. But for small and medium sized business owners, 25th December brought something much more foreboding than Christmas dinner and the Queen’s speech – it also happened to be when December’s quarterly rent payment on commercial premises fell due.
Businesses which have been struggling with lockdown-induced closures and the resulting revenue squeeze have been supported by the UK Government’s moratorium on commercial evictions, which was introduced in March and has prevented landlords from repossessing commercial premises if businesses are unable to pay their rent as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has meant that many businesses which have not been able to keep up rent payments have still been able to occupy their premises. The moratorium was initially scheduled to end on 31 December, but on 9 December, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick announced that this would be extended to 31 March 2021. On that date, any outstanding or late rent payments will fall due.