3What the file for a unit holds
One file is kept per unit and holds the agreement, the plan of what was demised, the counterpart, the inventory where one was taken, and the deposit protection reference, so the terms a unit is let on can be established from the file alone.
Events are recorded in the order they take effect — grant, assignment, variation, rent review, renewal, surrender, forfeiture — each carrying the date of effect and the document evidencing it, in which case a question about the terms in force on a given day is answered from the register.
The plan of what was demised is the part of the file consulted least and relied on most, to the extent that a question about a boundary, a loft, a bin store or a parking space is a question about the plan and about nothing else, whereas the agreement itself usually says only that the demise is as shown.
Where the interest the company holds in a building is itself leasehold, the file for a unit inside it carries the head lease as well, since a covenant in the head lease can bind the company in a way that the occupational agreement never mentions, in which case the two documents have to be read together.
3The seven events, and what each one moves
Each event below is entered against the unit reference with its date of effect and the document that evidences it. Nothing is entered from a conversation, and nothing is entered from an intention; an event reaches the register when the paper reaches the file.
3.6Grant
The event that opens the file. The register takes its date from the completion of the counterpart rather than from the date typed on the front of the agreement, whereas an agreement signed in advance of completion is held on the file and is not yet an event.
A grant moves the unit out of the void schedule at the reporting date that follows it, which is the only place the count and the lease register touch each other.
3.7Assignment
The transfer of an existing term to somebody else. The terms do not change, the party does, and the register therefore carries both the assignment and the consent relied on, to the extent that consent was required by the agreement being assigned.
An assignment leaves the occupancy figure untouched, since a unit let to one party and then to another is let throughout and never becomes a void.
3.8Variation
A change to the terms of a continuing lease, recorded with the deed or memorandum that made it. A variation is the event most often remembered incorrectly, in which case the register earns its keep by holding the date the change took effect rather than the date somebody agreed to it.
3.9Rent review
The operation of a review clause already in the lease, recorded with the date the reviewed rent takes effect and the memorandum evidencing the figure. The review changes what is demanded under clause 4 from that date and changes nothing else.
3.10Renewal
A fresh term granted to the party already in occupation. The register treats it as a new grant sitting behind the old one rather than as a continuation, so that the terms in force on any given day can be read off a single line without following a chain of assumptions.
Where a term simply continues on the same conditions after its contractual end, that continuation is recorded as an event in its own right, because a period nobody entered is a period nobody can later evidence.
3.11Surrender
The term ends by agreement between the parties, and the register carries the deed or the memorandum of it with the date the unit came back. The unit joins the void schedule from that date and stays on it until a grant takes it off again.
3.12Forfeiture
The term is brought to an end for breach, which is the one event on this list that is contested more often than it is recorded, in which case the file carries the notice, the date of re-entry or the proceedings, and the outcome, with nothing inferred between them.
Read in order, the seven events answer the only question the register exists to answer: what was in force, on what unit, on which day. Everything else the office does about a unit — the demands, the maintenance, the certificates — hangs off that answer and is written up on its own sheet.