Recovering commercial rent in Reading
The Thames Valley is the densest corporate office market outside London, and that shapes everything about enforcement here. Occupiers are overwhelmingly technology, professional and financial; leases are professionally drawn; rent deposits and parent company guarantees are the norm rather than the exception.
Office arrears come from Green Park, Thames Valley Park, Winnersh Triangle, the Station Road corridor and the business parks at Theale and Bracknell. Retail and hospitality sit around the Oracle, Broad Street and the Kings Road parades. Industrial and trade property is comparatively scarce and concentrates around Theale and the A33 corridor.
That balance is the point a landlord needs to hear plainly. A Thames Valley office occupier rarely holds goods worth the exercise: the fit-out belongs to the landlord, the IT is leased, and the furniture is often on an operating lease too. CRAR is a remedy against goods on the premises, and here those goods are frequently worth far less than the arrears.
What tends to matter locally
Check the rent deposit deed first. Almost every professionally drawn Thames Valley lease carries one, and drawing on the deposit is faster, cheaper and far less damaging to the relationship than enforcement. We would rather tell a landlord that than take an instruction which was never necessary.
Then check the guarantor. A Reading tenant is very often a UK subsidiary with a parent company guarantee behind it, and pursuing the guarantor may recover the whole sum where taking control of goods would recover a fraction of it.
Serviced and managed offices are common here too, 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 Reading 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 Reading 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.