Recovering commercial rent in Leeds
Leeds has a large professional services base, so a good share of commercial arrears here involve office suites rather than retail or industrial units. Office arrears tend to come with a longer paper trail, which usually makes the debt easier to prove and the tenant harder to find on site.
We act for landlords, managing agents and surveyors across West Yorkshire, most often in the financial quarter around Park Row, Holbeck and the South Bank, the Calls and Riverside and Kirkstall and the surrounding commercial areas. The procedure is the same wherever the property is, but what actually works on the ground is not, and it is worth understanding the difference before instructing anybody.
Where the work is
Leeds work concentrates in the financial and legal quarter around Park Row and East Parade, the mixed office and leisure stock through Holbeck and the South Bank, and the industrial belt at Cross Green, Hunslet and Kirkstall. Retail arrears come from the Briggate core and the smaller parades in Headingley and Chapel Allerton.
The professional-services weighting cuts both ways. Office arrears in Leeds usually come with a longer paper trail and a better-drawn lease, which makes the debt easier to establish. They also mean fewer goods on the premises worth taking control of, because the fit-out is the landlord’s and the equipment is leased. The Cross Green and Hunslet units are where CRAR does its real work here.
What tends to matter locally
The South Bank regeneration has moved a lot of occupiers into converted industrial buildings where several businesses share one address. Serving a notice at the right unit, rather than at the building, matters more here than in most places.
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 Leeds 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 Leeds 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.