How leasehold covenants restrict a commercial tenant's ability to alter premises, change their use or pass on the lease — and how statute limits the landlord's power to say no.
A lease is a bargain between landlord control and tenant flexibility, and Parliament has repeatedly intervened to redraw the line. This chapter opens with the three categories of covenant — absolute, qualified and fully qualified — before applying them to alterations, where improvements attract statutory protection even against an absolute prohibition, and to user covenants, where the landlord's ability to charge for consent is restricted. It then turns to alienation: the forms it takes, from assignment to underletting, the statutory upgrade of qualified covenants and the s 19(1A) regime for new tenancies, and the grounds on which a landlord may reasonably refuse consent, including the demand for an authorised guarantee agreement. Finally it covers the duties and burden of proof imposed by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1988, and how a head landlord can enforce covenants directly against an undertenant.
