Commercial & competitive

Section 2(1) of the Competition Act 1998 (the 1998 Act) prohibits agreements, decisions and practices which have as their “object or effect” the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the UK, unless they are exempt under s 9. This is defined by s 2(8) as “the Chapter I prohibition”. Until 6 April 2011, land agreements were excluded from the scope of the Ch I prohibition, but that exclusion was revoked by the Competition Act 1998 (Land Agreements Exclusion Revocation) Order 2010 (SI 2010/1709) (the 2010 Order). Accordingly, land agreements, including leases, are now subject to the Ch I prohibition.

In March 2011, just before the 2010 Order came into force, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) published a guideline (the guideline) on the application of competition law to land agreements (OFT1280a). Since the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) assumed many of the functions of the OFT in April 2014, it has retained the guideline, but with a health warning that it has