Cadogan, which owns 93 acres in London around Chelsea and Knightsbridge, will remove all base rents and move to turnover rents until 2021. “Over the past few months, we have been working closely with our hospitality businesses – over 30 restaurants, bars and cafés – to remove all base rents and convert each to turnover-only rent until 2021,” Cadogan chief executive Hugh Seaborn told Property Week.

“We are doing everything we can to encourage a safe and sustainable return for businesses across the area. This extends the support package that we agreed and announced earlier on this year and means our financial support for local business has now extended to almost £15m.”

The Howard de Walden Estate has also moved a number of hospitality occupiers to turnover-based rent agreements for the next 12 months. “Prior to lockdown, we were already reviewing our strategy for Marylebone Village to see how it could best meet the needs of retail and leisure businesses,” said Rob Kirk, the estate’s head of retail and leisure. “Since the pandemic hit, that process has had to accelerate.

“For some hospitality occupiers, we have agreed turnover-based rental agreements for the next 12 months and we continue to discuss options with others. Throughout this process, our key consideration has been to have an open dialogue with our retail and leisure occupiers and we will continue to do so during the coming months while we all work together to help Marylebone flourish.”

The moves follow a similar switch to turnover-based rents by Shaftesbury, as reported this week on PropertyWeek.com. Other major landlords including The Crown Estate and Capital & Counties are also offering tenants the opportunity to link lease terms to turnover to support businesses hit hard by the lockdown.

Turnover-based rents are not new. A number of landlords offer them including Quintain at its London Designer Outlet and Wembley Park and Argent at King’s Cross.

“From the beginning, some [rents] were based on base rent with some turnover, some were pure turnover, others were just pay base rent,” said David Partridge, senior partner of Argent and chairman of Argent Related, adding that turnover-based rents had not been widely adopted because of the difficulty assessing turnover.

However, he predicted, more landlords would now switch despite the challenges posed. “I think retail will move to turnover-based rent. The issue is how do you calculate turnover?” he said.

“How much is online and how much bricks-and-mortar? Do you count stuff where people have visited the shop but ordered online or when they return it to the shop but didn’t buy it there? That’s a tougher proposition for retailers and real estate providers to get their heads around. We’ve tended to work on a definition of what goes through the till. But that is changing.”