If there is an error in the notice served by a landlord or tenant when exercising its break clause in a lease, it will not necessarily invalidate the notice. The Courts will generally follow an “objective” approach by applying a reasonableness test as to whether the person receiving the notice might have been misled as a result of any errors in that notice.
In what has become the main case in relation to such matters (Mannai 1997) the tenant entered the wrong date for termination in its notice, but the Court held that a reasonable recipient would not have been perplexed by this error and therefore the notice was held to be valid.
You should be aware that if there are very specific conditions within the break clause in the lease as to what is required for the notice to be valid, then these must be followed precisely. As one judge commented, if the clause required the notice to be served on blue paper, then “it would have been no good serving a notice on pink paper”. An important lesson here is to get it right the first time!
For further information please contact Ben Kilshaw on 0207 355 6032 or e-mail bkilshaw@hamlins.co.uk