On 10 July 2025, the UK Government introduced the Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which proposes the abolition of upwards-only rent reviews in all business tenancies. Although the stated aim is to support struggling retailers and aid high street regeneration, the proposed legislation will apply broadly to all business tenancies.

Ireland took a similar step in 2010, banning upwards-only rent reviews in all commercial leases entered into after 1 March 2010. The legislation prohibited any provision that effectively resulted in an upwards-only rent review. Now, 15 years later, what lessons can practitioners in England and Wales draw from Ireland’s experience?

It is evident that the UK legislature has studied international precedents, including Ireland’s, when drafting its anti-avoidance provisions. In Ireland, landlords initially circumvented the ban by including clauses granting only the landlord the right to initiate rent reviews. This allowed them to maintain artificially high rents in a declining market by simply choosing not to trigger a review. While the legality of such clauses remains uncertain under Irish law, which prohibits any condition that effectively operates as an upwards-only clause, the UK’s draft legislation explicitly addresses this loophole by disallowing landlord-only triggers. Such clear drafting is essential to avoid similar disputes over ambiguous clauses, which in Ireland generated legal uncertainty in the early years of reform.