Recovering commercial rent in Cambridge
Cambridge is a science and technology market before it is anything else, and that shapes enforcement here in a very particular way: the tenants are well funded, the leases are professionally drawn, and the equipment on the premises is rarely worth what it cost.
Science and technology occupiers sit at the Cambridge Science Park, St John’s Innovation Park, the Babraham and Granta Parks and the Biomedical Campus. Retail and leisure run through the Grand Arcade, Market Street and Mill Road. Industrial and trade property is limited and concentrates at Cowley Road and Waterbeach.
Laboratory and research equipment is frequently leased, frequently specialised, and where it is owned it has almost no resale value outside its field. A science park unit can look expensively fitted and be worth very little to an enforcement agent.
What tends to matter locally
Check the rent deposit and any guarantor before considering enforcement. Cambridge leases almost always carry one, and a venture-backed tenant will often have a parent or investor covenant behind it that recovers far more than goods would.
Managed and serviced space is common on the innovation parks, and an occupier holding a licence rather than a lease is outside CRAR entirely.
How quickly we can be there
We aim to be with you within two hours, though being straight about it, that is rarely what decides the outcome: the compliance stage runs from the office, and the tenant first gets a written Notice of Enforcement with fourteen clear days to run before anybody attends. Most commercial arrears are settled inside that period without an attendance at all.
Where an attendance is needed in Cambridge we plan it around the occupier rather than around our diary, and we say honestly beforehand whether the goods on site are likely to justify the visit.
The statutory fees
Under the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014 the fees are fixed by statute: a £79 compliance fee when the Notice of Enforcement is issued, and a further £247 plus 7.5% of anything above £1,900 if an enforcement visit becomes necessary, with the full statutory scale set out in full separately.
Those figures are fixed by regulation, not by us, and they are the same in Cambridge as anywhere else in England and Wales.
Before you instruct us
Two things decide whether CRAR can be used at all:
- The lease must be a commercial one, in writing, with no part of the property let as a dwelling.
- At least seven days' rent must be outstanding, net of VAT, interest and any deduction the tenant could properly claim, which is the statutory minimum under section 77(3) of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007.
If both hold, we can usually have a Notice of Enforcement out the same working day we are instructed.