Hi there... I will try to ignore the comment of one poster about no-one in property being trusted (after all anyone with a pension is likely to have 5 to 10% invested in property) and would suggest that the following is passed on to Chris from someone with 25 years experience in property: clearly I do not know the full circumstances but I assume that Chris had a lease once and is now "holding over" - not a sitting tenant which is something very different and for residential premises. Therefore the landlord can get possession to re-demolish but only after going to court and proving the grounds for possession (planning consent, drawings, cash to do the work, etc...) - they cannot just serve a notice to quit (unless they had already been to court but Chris should know if this had happened). The attached linked gives some more detail - http://www.netlawman.co.uk/ia/lease-quit-2. There is no alternative but to get some legal or proper property advice to know whether this notice can be contested - as they say each case will have it own set of circumstances but especially since the new owner bought in full knowledge of Chris' occupation of the shop then this should provide Chris with some additional protection. Hope this helps (and this is not a pitch for the advice work!). Good luck.
