Many commercial leases appear to confer on landlords a wide and unilateral power to calculate and demand payment of service charges. However, an important  Supreme Court ruling indicates that they may not enjoy quite such a whip hand in future.

Mere overlooking by one property over another may not amount to a legal nuisance – but the Supreme Court has ruled in a landmark case that residents of flats that could be peered into by hundreds of thousands of visitors to London’s Tate Modern art gallery suffered exactly that wrong.

Tenants are only obliged to pay service charges that have been reasonably incurred. That principle was the focus of a guideline case concerning two apartment blocks which, according to an expert report, posed an intolerable fire risk.

Previous fire inspections of the blocks had uncovered no serious problems so that the report, which found combustible materials in their external walls, came as a bolt from the blue. The landlord’s response was to place a 24-hour waking watch on the blocks as an interim measure, at a cost of £28,000 a month.

It is a longstanding rule of law that dispositions of beneficial interests in land must be made in writing and signed. Times move on, however, and the Court of Appeal has ruled in a ground-breaking case that an email with a typed name at the bottom can suffice to meet that important legal requirement.

In an important case for commercial landlords and professional partnerships, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) has ruled that a law firm which leased its premises via the medium of a dormant company was entitled to recover VAT on its rent payments.

A local authority was entitled to require removal of three advertising hoardings that protruded a few centimetres over a pavement. The High Court’s ruling to that effect raised novel questions concerning the interrelationship between the powers of planning and highway authorities in respect of outdoor advertising.

Landlords often fight legal battles for what they perceive to be the benefit of their tenants – but can the legal and professional costs of pursuing such proceedings be recovered as service charges? As an Upper Tribunal (UT) ruling made plain, the answer to that question may depend on the sheer scale of the costs involved.

A few years ago the Scottish Parliament passed legislation introducing widespread reforms to residential lettings in Scotland. Its provisions are similar to the current White Paper on residential letting reform in England

In response to the cost of living crisis, the Scottish Parliament has now taken further steps to protect tenants and restrict a landlord’s powers in the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) Scotland Act 2022.

The question of whether a use of land amounts to an actionable nuisance very much depends on the character of the locality. The High Court made that point in ruling that noise and odours emanating from restaurant premises, whilst annoying, were tolerable in the midst of a popular tourist destination.

Companies have their own legal personalities, distinct from their owners. That basic principle of law could hardly be more important and proved decisive in a Court of Appeal case concerning an abortive attempt to terminate an agricultural tenancy.