Dilapidations are breaches of a tenant's obligations to repair, decorate and reinstate under a commercial lease. The word describes the breaches rather than the building's condition, which is why a tidy building can carry a large claim and a shabby one can carry almost none. What the tenant owes is set by the lease, and what the landlord can recover is capped by statute.
The lease sets the obligation
Full repairing and insuring leases put the whole burden on the tenant. A lease with a schedule of condition annexed limits repair to the state recorded when the tenant took it. Reinstatement of the tenant's own alterations is usually a separate covenant with its own notice requirements. Read all three before reading the schedule.
The claim is not the cost of the works
A landlord's quantified demand prices the remedial works, but damages are measured by the loss to the landlord. Section 18 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 caps them at the reduction in the value of the reversion, and the cap bites hard where the building is to be refurbished or redeveloped anyway.
Supersession
Where the landlord's own intended works would have replaced the item the tenant should have repaired, the tenant should not pay for it. This is supersession, and it is one of the two arguments that most often turns a large claim into a small one. It is evidenced with the landlord's own plans, not with assertion.
The provision in the accounts
Tenants approaching lease end commonly carry a dilapidations provision in their accounts, sized from their own surveyor's assessment rather than from the landlord's schedule. Getting an independent view early is what makes that number defensible and usually makes it smaller.
Questions people ask about dilapidations
What are dilapidations in simple terms?
They are the things a tenant was supposed to put right under the lease and did not, expressed as a claim at or near the end of the term.
What does dilapidation mean for a residential tenant?
Very little in the commercial sense. Residential tenancies are governed by different repairing rules and deposit schemes, and dilapidations as a discipline belongs to commercial leases.
When should a tenant start dealing with dilapidations?
Somewhere between eighteen and thirty six months before lease end, because that is when a tenant still has the option of doing the works themselves, which is nearly always cheaper than paying for somebody else to do them.