ABSTRACT
The nation’s retailers were particularly upset at being hounded to discharge all sorts of obligations they had long forgotten about and their trade association, the British Retail Consortium, lobbied long and hard (and ultimately successfully) to persuade Parliament that the time had come to remove the ‘iniquitous’ rule from the system. However, their opposite numbers looking after the interests of the property industry, the British Property Federation, were equally determined to ensure that, at the very least, the baby did not go out with the bathwater.When it was pointed out that in Scotland no great trauma was caused by the rule not being enforced north of the border, the BPF could fairly point out that neither were there security of tenure rights for business tenants when their lease expired.At least in Scotland you knew you could usually say goodbye to your tenant if you wanted to find another one.
