Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if his Department will bring forward plans to extend the forfeiture moratorium for commercial rents debt.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced on 16 June that the Government will introduce legislation to support the orderly resolution of rental payments accrued by commercial tenants during the pandemic. New legislation will ringfence rent debt accrued from March 2020 for tenants who have been impacted by Covid-19 business closures until restrictions are removed for their sector, and introduce a system of binding arbitration.

We expect terms to be agreed between commercial landlords and tenants affected by closures to defer or waive entirely a proportion of those rent arrears. But where agreement cannot be reached, both the landlord and tenant will need to undertake binding arbitration.

It is the Government’s expectation that landlords should share the financial burden with tenants where they are able to do so and give tenants breathing space to agree new terms, but also that tenants who can pay, should pay. This will also mean a return to normal contractual arrangements for those tenants able to pay rent debts in full and not affected by closures.

Until this legislation is in place, the existing moratorium on evictions will be extended to 25 March 2022. Statutory demands and winding up petitions will also remain restricted for a further three months to protect companies from creditor enforcement action where their debts relate to the pandemic. We will bring forward legislation during this parliamentary session.