Recovering commercial rent in Newcastle upon Tyne
Team Valley is one of the largest trading estates in the country, and most of the North East commercial arrears we see involve light industrial units there or on similar estates rather than city centre retail.
We act for landlords, managing agents and surveyors across the North East, most often in Grey Street and the city centre, Quayside, Ouseburn and Gateshead and Baltic Quay 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
Newcastle instructions come from the Quayside and city-centre office and leisure stock, the retail core around Northumberland Street and Grainger Town, and the industrial estates at Newburn, Byker and across the river at Team Valley in Gateshead: one of the largest trading estates in Europe and a regular source of trade and wholesale arrears.
Team Valley is the part most likely to justify an attendance, because trade and wholesale units hold saleable stock. City-centre leisure and hospitality holds fit-out and inventory and is usually worth pursuing too. Professional office suites on the Quayside frequently hold very little that belongs to the tenant.
What tends to matter locally
We are straight with clients about what an attendance in Newcastle involves: it is arranged for a date rather than offered same-day. Nobody is well served by a promise that cannot be kept.
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.
The North East is a planned attendance for us. We tell clients that honestly at the outset rather than discovering the distance matters once the fee has been paid.
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 Newcastle upon Tyne 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.