Brief Guide to changes to the Business Tenancy legislation - The Regulatory Reform (Business Tenancies) (England and Wales) Order 2003 (“the Order�)
The Order comes into force on 1st June 2004 introducing a number of changes to Part 2 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. To a large extent the changes are procedural and not substantive.

The Changes introduced by the Order
1.1 Definition of tenancy
There is no change to the basic definition of business tenancy to which the 1954 Act applies or to the definition of the holding (s23). There is no change in the definition of tenancies, which are excluded from the 1954 Act (s43).
The Order brings a material change in the following two situations:
(a) Where a company controlled by the tenant is in occupation or carrying on a business but the tenant is not: and
(b) a person with a controlling interest in the tenant company is in occupation or carrying on a business and the tenant is not.
This means the protection under the 1954 Act is extended to tenancies where the tenant and the business occupier are not the same, so long as one controls the other.
Articles 13 to 17 now widen the circumstances in which landlord and tenant can operate the statutory procedures of Part 2 so that an individual and any company he controls is to be treated as one and the same for the purposes of those procedures and that companies controlled by one individual is treated as members of a group of companies.
1.2 Continued requirement to serve a Section 25 Notice or Section 26 Request and to apply to the Court for a new tenancy
There is no material change to the provisions which continue a business tenancy and which (except where there is a tenant's notice to quit or surrender or a forfeiture) require the landlord to give to the tenant a Section 25 Notice in order to terminate a tenancy (Section 25). Where a Section 25 Notice is given by the landlord, or the tenant makes his own Section 26 Request for a new tenancy (Section 26 Request), then the tenant is still entitled to apply to the court for a new tenancy, and in the absence of agreement is still required to do so in order to maintain his right to a new tenancy.
Changes to: Prescribed Forms-Time Limit – Application for New Tenancy
New prescribed forms are introduced for Section 25 Notice and Section 26 Request.
The present time limit of four month for applying to the court for a new tenancy is extended. There is a formal statutory procedure for extending the time limit by agreement.
Both the landlord and tenant may now apply as opposed to the present law where only a tenant may do so.
1.3. Grounds of opposition to a new tenancy
The grounds of opposition to a new tenancy by a landlord will still be the same apart from one exception which will apply in the case where a landlord who does not intend to occupy the holding for a business to be carried out by him or it or as his residence, but, if an individual, whose company, or, if a company, whose controlling shareholder, does have that intention, such landlord will be able to rely on Section 30(1)(g) as a ground of opposition to a new tenancy.
1.3 Provisions as to duration, rent and terms of a new tenancy
The provisions as to duration, rent and terms of the new tenancy remain the same save for
minor amendments. The maximum term of a tenancy ordered by the court is increased from 14 to 15 years to take account of the now more familiar rent review periods of 5 years.
1.5 Role of the court
This is not changed. The court will still determine the rent duration and other terms in the absence of an agreement.

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