Guide
Dilapidations timing: when a quote is a budget and when it is evidence
Updated
Dilapidations is a subject where the same money spent at two different times buys wildly different outcomes, and the difference is measured in months rather than in fees.
More than a year out: a budget
At this stage a quote is a planning document. Its job is to tell you the size of the exposure so it can be provided for and, more usefully, so it can be reduced.
This is the only stage at which the tenant controls the outcome, because doing the works yourself, on your specification and with your contractor, is still available.
Within a year: the decision point
The choice between carrying out the works and negotiating a payment has to be made with enough time to do them. That is not a quick decision to reverse.
A terminal schedule may arrive during this period. Getting your own surveyor's view before it does is worth more than responding to it afterwards.
After a schedule is served: evidence
The quote is now a document the other side will test. Everything in the requirements list matters: keyed to the schedule, scope per item, alterations separated, assumptions stated.
The Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols expects parties to exchange information and narrow the issues before proceedings are issued, which is the framework this exchange happens in.
After expiry: fewer options, same cap
Once the lease has ended the tenant cannot carry out the works, so the negotiation is about money. What has not changed is section 18(1): damages still cannot exceed the diminution in the value of the reversion.
What the landlord then does with the building becomes highly relevant evidence, which is why the question of the landlord's intentions gets asked at this stage and answered reluctantly.
The one thing worth doing early whatever happens
Find the lease, every licence to alter, and the schedule of condition if one was attached at the start. Those three documents decide more of the outcome than any pricing exercise.
They are also the documents most likely to have been lost, and reconstructing what was agreed about alterations fifteen years ago is not a task anybody enjoys under a deadline.