Recovering commercial rent in Oxford
Oxford has two commercial economies that barely touch each other: a city-centre retail and hospitality market driven by tourism and the university terms, and a science and technology sector spread across the business and research parks on the ring road.
Retail and leisure sit around Westgate, Cornmarket, the Covered Market and the High. Science and technology occupiers are at the Oxford Science Park, Oxford Business Park at Cowley, Begbroke and Milton Park further south. Industrial and trade property concentrates at Osney Mead, Botley and Cowley.
The science tenants are the difficult case. Their equipment is frequently specialised, frequently leased, and where it is owned it has almost no resale value outside the sector. A laboratory full of instruments can be worth far less at auction than a trade counter full of stock.
What tends to matter locally
The terms drive the retail trade. A city-centre unit can look desperate in August and healthy by November, and a landlord who enforces in the vacation may be closing a business that would otherwise have paid. It is worth taking a view on the trading year before serving anything.
On the science parks, check the lease carefully: a good deal of that space is let on managed or serviced terms, 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 Oxford 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 Oxford 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.