Take notice! How might the Royal Mail strikes affect service of your notices?

Most contracts and leases will include notice clauses. This sets out how notices should be served on the landlord by the tenant, and vice versa. Failure to follow notice provisions correctly is often a source of property litigation as they must be strictly followed otherwise, the event that you wanted to occur may be invalidated.

Some leases include a break option, allowing the landlord or tenant to end the lease early. Deadlines are extremely important with break options. If a break date is missed, as a result of late service of the notice, the lease will continue for the full term.

For residential lease extensions, the outcome for failing to serve a notice on time could mean being treated as not having served one at all, with potential adverse costs consequences.

Typical rules relating to service of notices include:

• If served by post, the date of deemed service is the second working day after it was delivered.
• If served by hand before 16.30, the date of deemed service is the day it was delivered.
• If served by hand after 16.30, the date of deemed service is the following day after it was delivered.

Royal Mail strikes already took place on 24, 25, 30 November 2022 and 1 December 2022. Further strikes are planned for 9, 11, 14, 15, 23 and 24 December 2022. These strikes will impact delivery of post and therefore the deemed service of documents.

Some leases specifically refer to service in the ‘ordinary course of postage’, but whether the strikes would be considered when calculating the ordinary course of postage, is arguable (and it’s certainly not worth the risk of testing the point).

Proceed with caution!

Our clear advice for those wishing to serve notices in the next few weeks/months is to make sure that notices are served well in advance of any deadlines to allow plenty of time for delivery. Better still, personal service should be used wherever possible to remove the postal risk. At any time, the consequences of getting it wrong when it comes to notices can be substantial and very costly. The delays caused by the Royal Mail strikes add another potential risk. We can help prevent this and ensure that your notices are served correctly. Please get in touch with our experienced Property Disputes team.