there will be some unhappy people in Chelsea!
Come 2031, there could be quite a few exchanges in a similar situation, especially in area's where buildings and land are at a premium. Some of the properties have been re-sold and for at least some of these, the new landlords are just biding their time until they can kick BT out or renegotiate the lease at a premium cost.
eg £45M @
High Holborn. There's probably quite a few more in certain areas.
Even
BT's National Distribution centre. expires 2026.
The re-selling of leaseholds has become big business that many people are not aware of. There's a lot of building organisations such as Barrett etc who have sold out 100's of thousands of their leaseholds to property developers and home owners have found ground rent prices have sky rocketed, despite many people thinking they own their own home they too have been affected and their hands are tied. I'm only aware because a friend of mine in involved in one of the campaigns to try get some sort of protection for property owners. Search Leasehold Scandal if you want to know more, but there is rumour that Leasehold Scandal could be the next PPI in terms of mis-selling.
btw Property leaseholds was one of the problematic areas mentioned should a split between BT & Openreach occur.
BT’s estate includes over 5,000 exchanges and hundreds of other buildings. Ownership of many of these has been transferred to Telereal under a sale and leaseback arrangement. An independent Openreach would need to take over many buildings. However, BT’s arrangement with Telereal does not fully allow BT to assign its occupational leases of the properties. To achieve this it would require a renegotiation of the arrangements. This would be extremely complex and costly and result in BT being subject to high penalty charges. Any assignment of the BT occupational leases will have implications for associated sub-tenancy agreements entered into with CPs, which use exchanges for equipment or accommodation.
The ownership of each premises would need to be dealt with individually. Short cuts would not be possible: for example, exchange buildings may house Openreach network assets and non-Openreach core network assets (and they can include space rented by CPs). Each building would need to be properly surveyed and plans prepared to determine which parts would remain owned by BT and which would be transferred to the new legal entity. There would be significant expenses, in particular legal and surveyors’ costs and the landlord’s professional fees. It would be a resource intensive programme, requiring some years to complete. It might be possible for BT to sub let the buildings to Openreach, but the sub-leases would have to be consistent with the term of BT’s current occupational lease arrangement and could only be granted until 2031. In addition to the lengthy process of preparing plans of the sub-let areas for shared properties, the issue of physical separation and working out the allocation of the various costs applicable to the properties would lead to practical complications involving substantial fees and significant amount time and resource.