Premises are usually a business’s largest fixed commitment after payroll, and a commercial lease is far less forgiving than a residential one. The protections you have as a tenant at home largely do not apply here.
Rent is rarely the expensive part
Everyone focuses on the rent. The terms that actually cost money over a ten-year lease are the ones people skim: repairing obligations, service charge, break clause conditions, and whether the lease is contracted out of security of tenure.
Repairing obligations
A “full repairing and insuring” lease can oblige you to hand the premises back in better condition than you took them, and to contribute to repairs of the wider building. In an older building that liability can run to tens of thousands at the end of the term. A schedule of condition agreed at the start — a photographic record of how the premises were — limits that, but only if it is done at the start.
Security of tenure
Business tenancies carry a statutory right to renew at the end of the term, unless the parties have contracted out following a prescribed procedure. Whether your lease is contracted out determines whether you can stay — and far too many businesses first ask this question in their final year, when it is too late to change.
Break clauses
Break clauses fail more often than they succeed, almost always on a technicality: notice served late, on the wrong party, or with conditions about vacant possession and rent not strictly met. Courts apply these conditions strictly. If you want the flexibility to leave, the clause has to be negotiated carefully and exercised precisely.
The cheapest point to get advice
Is before the heads of terms harden into a lease. Changing a term at heads of terms stage is a conversation; changing it after the lease is drafted is a negotiation; changing it after signing is usually impossible. Involve a solicitor early — it is where the value is.