PART VIICREDIT CEILING

Excluded credit arrangements

22.—(1) Any credit arrangement which is a lease of land shall be excluded for the purposes of paragraph 11(2) of Schedule 3 to the Act where, at the time a local authority become the lessees, they estimate that the value of the consideration which they will have given in respect of the lease by the end of each relevant financial year will be equal to or more than the relevant amount at that date.

(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1) above, “the relevant amount” is the total amount of consideration which would have fallen to have been given by the local authority in respect of the lease at or before the end of a relevant financial year if the consideration to be given by the authority in respect of the lease had been wholly in money and consisted of a single annual payment of rent to be paid in the year equal to the amount estimated by the authority as the open market rent for the lease on the assumption that no premium fell to be paid in respect of the grant or assignment of the lease.

(3) In this regulation, the reference to a relevant financial year is a reference to a financial year which begins after the local authority become the lessees.

(4) Regulation 5(3) applies for the purposes of this regulation as it applies for the purposes of Part IV of these Regulations.