User:RichsLaw/Leasehold estates in English law

Leasehold estates are a form of property interest in English property law, where an individual or group of individuals lease a property from its legal owner, for a fixed period of time, and with exclusive possession over it. Leases are primarily made over residential property, commercial property, and agricultural property, and can range in duration from months to hundreds of years. The primary requirements necessary for a lease to be recognised are a certain term of duration, and the exclusive possession of leaseholders to the property. If an arrangement meets these criteria, it will fall under the protection of the Rent Acts, which ensure rent paid is of a fair amount, and give protection to leaseholders from unfair eviction.

Overview
Fixed term

Period

Certainty of duration
An old requirement of leases is that the term it is agreed for must be certain in order for there to be a valid lease; an agreement to lease a property until a contingent event occurs will be void for uncertainty. Therefore in Lace v Chantler a lease lasting for the duration of the Second World War was held to be invalid, with statutory intervention being required to convert many similar agreements into legally enforceable leases. The principle was recently reaffirmed by the House of Lords in Prudential Assurance Co Ltd v London Residuary Body, where a lease was granted for a strip of land, until the local Council required it for widening the highway it bordered. Although the Lords held that the lease was invalid for certainty, Lord Browne-Wilkinson stated in deference to the principle, that:

"No one has produced any satisfactory rationale for the genesis of this rule. No one has been able to point to any useful purpose that it serves at the present day."

Some commentators have remarked that it is an unnecessary principle, given that if a landlord simply sets a maximum duration, and stipulates that upon a certain event the lease will end, the lease will be perfectly valid. One reason for requiring a certainty of duration is that, in the instant case the Council may never have required use of their land, and thus the lease may have run indefinitely. This would have had the consequence of putting them at large financial loss, with the original lease being granted for £30 per annum, and the land at the time of the legal action being worth some £10,000 per annum.