On 16 June 2021, the UK Government announced that the measures in place in rUK to protect commercial tenants from eviction will be extended to 25 March 2022. We talk about the announcement here insofar as it affects rUK.
For Scotland, the only change that affects it is the extension of what is essentially a ban on statutory demands and winding-up petitions by three months to the end of September 2021.
The Scottish Government has, however, proposed the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill. If passed (and there's no obvious reason it won't be), the notice period for irritancy of commercial leases for arrears will remain at 14 weeks until 31 March 2022.
Otherwise, the remedies normally available to landlords in Scotland to recover arrears remain available.
It remains to be seen whether or not the UK Government's proposal to pass legislation that will ringfence outstanding unpaid rent that has built up when a business has had to close during the pandemic will be followed by the Scottish Government. So far there has been nothing to suggest they will - there is no mention of it in the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill. The fact the Scottish Government did not (unlike the UK Government) remove most of the remedies for recovering arrears available to commercial landlord's suggests that they are unlikely to impose a process on those landlords that requires them to waive arrears or agree payment arrangements, failing which, there will be mandatory arbitration.
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