The Property Standardisation Group had another busy year in 2024, continuing its mission to produce high-quality, standardised property documents that the legal profession relies on. As the PSG suite of documents grows we spend a lot of time maintaining the existing documents to make sure they remain up-to-date with legislative changes, the latest legal developments and best practices of the profession. This year that included updating all 19 PSG leases to reflect the latest version of the Model Commercial Lease (version 1.7). New versions of the Licences for Works were produced to reflect the changes. As you can imagine, this was a time-consuming task. We are grateful to Ann Stewart at Shepherd + Wedderburn, who currently hosts the PSG website, for taking responsibility for the final proof reading of all 19 documents after we had shared the updating between us.
The PSG worked closely with an external legal technology company, Clarilis, on their automation of many of the PSG documents this year, including the leases. We found this a valuable opportunity to identify and correct minor amendments to the PSG suite to ensure consistency across the documents. The automated documents are available from Clarilis on a subscription basis.
We produced a Minute of Variation of Lease with guidance notes in 2024 to complement the Offer to enter into a minute of variation of lease.
Although there was no major new property legislation in 2024 we updated all those documents that refer to overseas entities (the offers to sell, offer to grant a lease and the due diligence questionnaire) to reflect the new duty on overseas entities to respond to a Section 1092A notice from the Companies Registrar. Failure to respond to such a notice satisfactorily means the overseas entity will be treated as unregistered and this is reflected in the drafting.
The residential dispositions creating new title conditions had a minor update this year to incorporate the standard clause prohibiting an application to the Lands Tribunal for 5 years where new real burdens and servitudes are created.
Ann Stewart and Rachel Oliphant delivered a presentation to the students on the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn to share the history of the creation and work of the PSG with them.
We have been working on two new Subleases this year – one designed to be used with a PSG lease and the other which is non-PSG lease compatible. We plan to publish these, with accompanying Guidance Notes, in the New Year.
As we move into 2025, the PSG remains committed to its core mission of standardising property documents and supporting the legal profession. We have no doubt that in 2025 we will be responding to more legislative changes: this month has seen the introduction of the Leases (Automatic Continuation etc.) (Scotland) Bill that will mean more new drafting for the PSG leases. With ongoing projects, regular maintenance and new initiatives on the horizon, the PSG will continue making a significant contribution to the profession.