Where do we stand in this situation please legally.
We rented a commercial property just under 1 year ago on a 3 year tenancy. Included verbally at time of viewing was a large 4 room cellar underneath the shop. At time of viewing and signing we had the only access to this cellar from a small door in our back room corridor.
For information purposes there is a warehouse backed onto our shop that I suspect years ago was accessible from the back corridor but this has a permanent wall fitted separating the two units.
Back to the cellar, originally the high street cellars were connected by a series of underground tunnels, we have two of these tunnels in our cellar that have been bricked up. The cellar was as I stated in four separate rooms however no physical doors between each room just a doorway. We have been down to our cellar this morning to discover one of the doorways has been bricked up! We now only have access to two of the four rooms.
To reiterate the only access to the cellar was through a door in OUR corridor. To get to that door you would need to walk through the front door of our shop (which is shuttered when closed) through another door into the back corridor. It is not possible anyone has come through this without our knowledge as we changed the locks on the front doors to the shop and only we have the keys (landlord aware).
Which leaves a conundrum about how the wall appeared! We tried several times this morning to contact landlord but he didn’t answer, we reported it to the police too.
We finally got hold of landlord this afternoon who mentioned the tenant of the warehouse behind might have knocked down the wall of the cellar that backs onto his warehouse and put the wall up.
Whilst it all sounds very odd (and trust me I’ve been scratching my head all day about it) where do we stand legally on this matter, verbally the cellar was for our own sole use. We have not been asked, or given permission for it to be split. It however doesn’t appear on the tenancy agreement (which is just a Google commercial property tenancy).
Picture of new brick wall in cellar just for those who want to see!