have changed the nature of the office building from commercial to residential and the property guardians were held to be almost akin to security guards and so occupying for the landowner. The liability to pay business rates was restored and the landowner was left with a large bill for rates and legal fees. The other case is the decision of the Upper Tribunal in Global 100 v Jimenez (2022). In Jimenez, the question for the Upper Tribunal was whether properties used for property guardianship schemes are capable of being houses in multiple occupation, and therefore subject to licensing and criminal penalties for not having a licence. The Upper Tribunal held (having regard to the policies underlying the Housing Act 2004) that they could be HMOs. Since the Jimenez case there have been a raft of local authority prosecutions seeking fines against commercial landowners who have used property guardianship schemes. In the view of the authors, properly structured property guardianship schemes can provide benefits for owners of commercial property, but they need to be carefully designed and it is sensible for legal advice to be taken as to both the likely efficacy and pitfalls before entering into any such scheme.
"Property guardianship schemes can provide benefits for owners of commercial property but they need to be carefully designed." the occupiers a tenancy with security of tenure/have to apply for planning permission for the change of use, the owner placed duties on the property guardians to live at the property for a certain number of days, limited the extent to which they could have guests staying over, and required them to report intruders. This litigation resulted in two trials before the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) and the Court of Appeal (with which the authors were involved). The result was that the scheme was held to not
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