Recovering commercial rent in Plymouth
Plymouth is a dockyard city at the end of a long peninsula, and both facts matter. The marine and defence supply chain dominates the industrial stock, and the distance from anywhere else means an attendance here is planned rather than improvised.
Industrial and trade property sits at Estover, Langage, Faraday Mill and around Devonport. Retail and leisure concentrate on Drake Circus, New George Street and the Barbican. Office stock is limited and sits around the city centre and Royal William Yard.
Marine and defence suppliers hold tooling and components that frequently belong to a prime contractor rather than the tenant, and none of that can be taken into control. The Estover and Langage units serving other trades are usually a far cleaner position.
What tends to matter locally
Where a tenant supplies the dockyard, assume the ownership question is complicated until the agreements say otherwise. We ask for them before attending rather than discovering the position on site.
The Barbican and waterfront leisure trade is seasonal, and arrears built over the winter often clear by late summer. Enforcing in February can close a business that would have paid by August.
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 Plymouth 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 Plymouth 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.