Recovering commercial rent in Leicester
Leicester has an unusually large base of small textile and garment units, many of them a few thousand square feet on short leases, alongside a strong independent retail trade around Belgrave Road. Arrears here are more often in the low thousands than the tens of thousands.
We act for landlords, managing agents and surveyors across Leicestershire and the East Midlands, most often in the city centre and Highcross, the Cultural Quarter, Frog Island and Belgrave Road 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
Leicester instructions come heavily from the textile and light manufacturing units around Frog Island, Belgrave and the North Evington corridor, and from the business-park stock at Meridian and Grove Park. Retail and hospitality arrears come from the Highcross surrounds, the Golden Mile and the independent parades through Clarendon Park.
The manufacturing and wholesale base means stock is usually present and usually saleable, which makes Leicester a stronger CRAR market than its office-heavy neighbours. The complication is sub-letting: a good deal of the older industrial stock is informally shared, and goods on the premises may belong to an occupier who is not your tenant at all.
What tends to matter locally
Textile and garment units routinely hold stock that belongs to a brand or a customer rather than to the tenant. On those premises, establishing ownership before anything is listed is not a formality, it is the whole job, and getting it wrong exposes the landlord as well as us.
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.
We attend Leicester regularly. Where a unit looks informally shared, we establish whose goods are whose before attending rather than discovering it at the door.
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 Leicester 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.