Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949

5 Respective liabilities of landlord and tenant for provision and maintenance of fixed equipment and for payment of insurance premiums

(1) Where a lease has been entered into for the letting of an agricultural holding, a record of the condition of the fixed equipment on the holding shall be made forthwith, and on being so made shall be deemed to form part of the lease; and the provisions of section seventeen of this Act shall apply to the making of such a record and to the cost thereof as they apply to a record made under that section.

(2) There shall be deemed to be incorporated in every lease for the letting of an agricultural holding—

(a) an undertaking by the landlord that, at the commencement of the tenancy or as soon as is reasonably possible thereafter, he will put the fixed equipment on the holding into a thorough state of repair, and will provide such buildings and other fixed equipment as will enable an occupier reasonably skilled in husbandry to maintain efficient production as respects both the kind of produce specified in the lease, or (failing such specification) in use to be produced on the holding, and the quality and quantity thereof, and will during the tenancy effect such replacement or renewal of the buildings or other fixed equipment as may be rendered necessary by natural decay or by fair wear and tear; and

(b) a provision that the liability of the tenant in relation to the maintenance of fixed equipment shall extend only to a liability to maintain the fixed equipment on the holding in as good a state of repair (natural decay and fair wear and tear excepted) as it was in immediately after it was put in repair as aforesaid or, in the case of equipment provided, improved, replaced or renewed during the tenancy, as it was in immediately after it was so provided, improved, replaced or renewed.

(3) Nothing in the last foregoing subsection shall be deemed to prohibit any agreement made after the lease has been entered into between the landlord and the tenant whereby one of the parties undertakes to execute on behalf of the other party, and wholly at his own expense or wholly or partly at the expense of the other party, any work which the other party is required to execute in order to fulfil his obligations under the lease.

(4) Any provision in a lease requiring the tenant to pay the whole or any part of the premium due under a fire insurance policy over any fixed equipment on the holding shall be null and void.

(5) Any question arising as to the liability of a landlord or of a, tenant under this section shall be determined by arbitration.

(6) This section shall not apply to any lease entered into before the first day of November, nineteen hundred and forty-eight.