Section 25 notices and lease renewals – what GP practices need to know
Rachel Croft and Stephanie Trompeter, real estate litigation specialists at Hempsons, offer practical advice for GP practices in relation to notices served under the Landlord and Tenant Act.
With the day-to-day pressures of running a busy GP practice, lease renewals can be forgotten about. However, if you do not respond to a section 25 notice – which are issued under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 – in a timely manner, it can have significant operational and financial consequences. Understanding how these notices work is key to protecting your right to stay in occupation of your premises.
Here are six practical points which every GP practice should keep in mind.
1. Do not ignore a section 25 Notice
A section 25 notice is a landlord’s legal notice to end your 1954 Act protected tenancy and (generally) to propose terms for a new tenancy. The notice will contain a strict statutory deadline. If you miss this deadline, the GP practice will lose both the right to renew its existing lease and (after expiry of the notice) its right to occupy the premises. The landlord could seek to recover possession. This would have serious implications, not least operationally.
To avoid this pitfall, make sure that you obtain legal advice and prepare your court application as a protective step in good time before the statutory deadline set out in the Section 25 notice. Your lawyer may also be able to help agree extensions to the deadline, allowing more time for more negotiation and hopefully limiting costs.
2. Has a section 40 notice also been served?
You might find that the section 25 notice has been accompanied by a section 40 notice, which is a request for information. Your landlord might want to find out whether you occupy the premises yourselves or whether you share occupation with a third party, such as a pharmacy.
If a third party operates from the premises, the landlord may want to know the terms of occupation. Is this a breach of the terms of your lease? Will this complicate the renewal process? If you fail to respond to a section 40 notice within one month, it is a breach of your statutory duty and could have negative consequences.
3. What type of section 25 notice has been served?
Most commonly, you will be served a landlord’s unopposed (or ‘friendly’) section 25 notice in which the landlord has set out his proposals for the terms of the new lease. Do not assume that the terms of your existing lease will be carried over into your renewal lease: the terms proposed by your landlord for the new lease could be materially different.
You should consider the landlord’s proposed terms carefully, especially the proposed rent, term length and break options. You should obtain expert advice from a surveyor experienced in primary care premises, as they will understand the valuation evidence used for comparable surgeries and the approach of the local district valuer on issues of rent reimbursement.
A lease renewal is the perfect opportunity to explore terms that could be useful for the future of the premises. For example, do you want to negotiate a tenant’s break clause or a service charge cap into the new lease (especially if you operate out of an old building)? If your original lease did not include GP protections (for example, around rent reimbursement, rent reviews aligned to DV valuations, partnership changes and sharing with other single neighbourhood providers), there may be an opportunity to correct this going forwards. Your landlord is not obliged to accept different terms, but do not miss the opportunity to try.
4. Keep the ICB informed
Assuming you receive rent reimbursement, you should communicate with the ICB from the beginning of the lease renewal process, as it will need to approve the rent and other lease terms. You need to be very careful not to agree any terms with the landlord unless you are sure you have ICB support to do so.
Unfortunately, the ICB approval and appeals process is entirely separate from the court process for lease renewals, so expert advice from medical premises specialist lawyers and surveyors is important to help you navigate this well and to avoid pitfalls.
5. What if you are served an opposed section 25 notice?
An opposed (or ‘hostile’) section 25 notice seeks to end your tenancy on the termination date stated in the notice without offering you a new tenancy. If you would like to continue your occupation, you will need to apply to the courts for a new tenancy before the deadline in the notice and successfully challenge the landlord’s grounds for opposition. If the landlord is opposing renewal, it must rely on one or more specific statutory grounds. The most common grounds are redevelopment of the premises or that the landlord intends to occupy the premises themself.
If you are served a hostile section 25 notice, you should seek legal advice immediately. The matter is time-sensitive and it will take a while to decide your strategy and gather helpful evidence to support your case to remain in occupation.
6. Who is named in the section 25 notice?
The landlord must serve the section 25 notice on everyone who legally holds the lease. If the lease is registered at HM Land Registry, the notice should be served on the partners named on the official property register, these individuals being the ‘registered proprietors’ of the lease. The registered proprietors should mirror the current GP partners of the practice, although you can only specify a maximum of four individuals on property register.
If there is a mismatch between the current GP partners of the practice and the registered proprietors, the practice may run into difficulties in the lease renewal process. What if, for example, the notice is served on former partners who have now retired or run a different surgery?
To ensure a smoother lease renewal process, you should seek legal advice to ensure that assignments are completed every time the GP partnership changes. Saving money by not doing this at the time of partnership changes could cost you in the future – possibly even the loss of your premises.
A section 25 notice can feel like a daunting legal document to receive. It can be tempting to push it down the priority list, but it is better to prepare early and seek advice from specialist medical lawyers and surveyors. These steps should enable you to protect your GP premises and, ideally, put in place new lease on terms which best support the operational needs of the practice.
First published in GP Business, February 2026.