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7 articles
SME owners often prepare for a sale by focusing on accounts, customers and commercial contracts, only to find that the premises lease becomes a late-stage gatekeeper. A structured pre-sale property review helps vendors identify consent requirements, dilapidations exposure, compliance gaps and handover evidence before a buyer’s diligence team does.
A practical four-week method for measuring desk, meeting-room and storage use, then converting the findings into a board decision on renegotiating, downsizing, subletting or reshaping the workplace. It sets out a simple audit template and the lease, service charge, business rates and dilapidations tests to run before acting.
Insurers, landlords and lenders rarely ask only whether a property risk assessment exists. They ask where the evidence sits, who owns it and when it was last reviewed. This guide shows how a small UK occupier can consolidate statutory property compliance into a single board-level register.
For many SME occupiers, dilapidations arrive as a single unwelcome invoice at the end of a lease. This guide sets out a preventative five-year plan: survey the condition, agree the record, fund the liability and negotiate from evidence rather than panic.
Service charge disputes rarely turn on the size of the demand. They turn on evidence, deadlines and the quality of the paper trail. A governance-led approach to auditing and challenging commercial service charges — who owns the decision, what to request, and the point at which escalation becomes worthwhile.
The 2026 revaluation bills are now with occupiers, and the first instalments have been collected. This practical audit helps owner-managers verify the property facts behind the rateable value, check reliefs and transition, and assemble evidence before deciding whether a challenge is warranted.
A decision framework for UK SMEs approaching a lease break or renewal in 2026. It compares rent, service charges, dilapidations, EPC upgrade costs and disruption through a scored model and an adviser timetable.