Hire, rent or lease - what written agreements do you have with the owners of your building?

[bringonthemulledwine]

Morning
I am on the committee of a PLA committee run pre-school and am looking in to the Early Years capital Grant application for our pre-school. One of the conditions of the grant is to have security of tenure on your premises, and at the moment we pay termly and that is it. There is nothing written down. I am trying to discuss this with the Trustees of the building - the local Church Centre - and they are very reluctant to draw anything up and being very difficult on the whole. All we want is something reflecting the unwritten agreement which exists between us at the moment. My powers of diplomacy are being tested to the limts.
What agreements do you have with your "landlords" ? What length of time are they for and what are your notice periods. Do you have any special clauses included in them?
ANy feedback would be great
THanks

[misshardbroom]

I can't really help with the OP question as we own our building outright. However, we are looking to agree a lease with a local primary school so I'm very interested in the answers other people can provide.

(and also how much you pay & in which region of the country, please! )

[geogteach]

We are in Surrey. We rent premises from a church. We got in a lot of bother last year when they wanted to knock it down and rebuild, after much searching a very old lease was discovered and we had to renegotiate a new one at very high cost (monetary and bad feeling). Credit crunch has scuppered new building we have just had to resign, we only sign for a year as otherwise trustees names remain on the lease and trustees change regularly. I would make sure that you have legal representation, tenancy law is not straightforward.

[littlerach]

we have a Transfer of control between school and us (we rent a room).
it outilnes all of the areas that may be of concern.

[bringonthemulledwine]

Littlerach - I haven't come across a transfer of control. More researching in to that needed.
If you have access to the PLA and are members, you are entiltled to free legal advice through a service they offer called lawcall. If you call the PLA they should be able to help out and they also have model leases on thr resource page.
Geogteach - are you the sole users of the building? We have been told that we can't have a lease beause we don't have exclusive use of the building and the church appear v wary to committ to a lease. If you did manage I would be v interested in how you did negotiate this.
THe problem we have is that the county council want some security in terms of us not getting thrown out as we are wanting to re-surface the outside space and contribute to the general refurbishments which the Church have planned. The money for this would come from the grant. So we have been told we might need to have a license but need to agree a notice period and a term for the lease. The council want a years notice and at least 3 years on the license. I just wondered what everyone else had to use as a bit of a bargaining tool!

[littlerach]

I think that the school land may be owned by a diocese, so this may be reason for transfer of control.
It is signed by head teacher, chair of governors and chair of committee.

Actually, it has lapsed and was due for renewal in Dec 08 but we have applied for a new build, so haven't renewed it!

[geogteach]

We do have sole use of part of the building (the pre school room) but have daily access to other parts of the building. When we were sorting the lease for the new building that didn't happen we did have issues getting the church to agree to sole use. We had access to law call but it did not cover lease negotiations and we had to foot a hefty solicitors bill.

[misshardbroom]

talking of the PLA's LawCall line, can anyone give me the number? We are members but I can't find it anywhere.

[DorisIsAPinkDragon]

be wary of Lawcall (not saying don't use), on a pre-school committee last year. We rang on a few occasions on the same issue and got three different sets of advice So not overly reassuring!

[bringonthemulledwine]

TO get to lawcall I had to phone the PLA and they put me through as you also need a reference number.PLA number 02076972500
Dorisisa pinkdragon - Yes I was worried about getting different advice, but I also spoke to a solicitor locally. I suppose it is like asking 10 people to tell you how to make a chocolate cake- you'll get 10 different answers. And everyone's interpretation is different, also depending who they are acting for!

[cktwo]

Can I ask what you need the capital grant for?
We were turned down for it last year for this reason but I now have found funding elsewhere that does not ask the tenure question. We too are in a similat position to you in that the church owns the land but no-one knows who owns the building?

[bringonthemulledwine]

Sorry not to have got back before cktwo. We have put in for resources but we are also wanting to contribute to pre-school specific improvements which are being done as part of the refurb of the whole building - eg low level loos in a loo block whihc is being moved and re-developed, and for outside stuff whihc the owners don't consider essential but would make our environment so much better, as well as benefitting the owners and the wider community. If we can't get some security it will just be resources I suspect.

[cktwo]

Try Awards for all. They don't ask about tenure. It might only be specific to the outside part of the project though.