Who can sue and be sued on a lease's covenants — a question whose answer depends entirely on whether the lease was granted before or after 1 January 1996.
A lease can pass through many hands, and the rules deciding which of those hands remain on the hook changed fundamentally with the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995. This chapter starts with the doctrines of privity of contract and privity of estate, the distinction between assignment and subletting, and the dividing date that splits leases into old and new regimes. It works through each regime in turn: the original tenant's continuing liability and the 'touch and concern' test under old leases, then automatic release, authorised guarantee agreements and the landlord's release procedure under new ones. It closes with the controls on assignment itself — absolute and qualified covenants, the landlord's duties on an application for consent — and the routes for recovering arrears from former tenants through section 17 notices, overriding leases and the chain of indemnity.
