Recovering commercial rent in Coventry
Coventry arrears work is weighted towards the automotive supply chain and the logistics corridor along the M6 and M69, with a separate and quite different market in the student-facing retail and leisure around the two universities.
The industrial side runs through Foleshill, Canley, Binley and the Prologis and Ryton parks out towards the motorway: engineering, automotive supply, warehousing and trade counters. The office stock concentrates at Coventry Business Park and Westwood. Retail and hospitality sit around Broadgate, Cathedral Lanes and the parades serving the university quarter.
The industrial units are where CRAR does its real work here, because they hold stock, plant and vehicles. The caution is that in an automotive supply chain a great deal of that plant is financed, leased or subject to retention of title, and none of it can be taken into control however substantial it looks on the floor.
What tends to matter locally
Student-facing retail and leisure has a trading year that does not match the rent quarters. A unit that looks hopeless in July is often perfectly capable of clearing arrears by November, and a landlord who enforces in the quiet months can end up with an empty shop and no tenant to pay. We say so before serving anything.
On the industrial side, ask for the finance agreements up front. Establishing what the tenant actually owns before attending is the difference between a productive visit and a wasted one, and on a Foleshill or Binley unit that question is rarely straightforward.
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 Coventry 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 Coventry 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.