Recovering commercial rent in East Central London
The EC postcodes are the densest commercial tenancy market in the country, and the least typical. Occupiers are overwhelmingly financial, legal, insurance and professional, with a growing technology presence through EC1 and EC2. Leases are professionally drawn, rent deposits are common, and guarantors are usual: all of which changes the calculation before anyone considers enforcement.
Instructions here cluster around Farringdon and Smithfield, the Barbican fringe, Aldgate and Houndsditch, Fleet Street and Ludgate, and the Liverpool Street and Shoreditch boundary where the City meets Hackney. Ground-floor retail and hospitality serving the weekday trade sits underneath most of it.
Office occupiers in the City rarely hold goods worth the exercise. Their equipment is leased, their fit-out belongs to the landlord, and their files are worthless at auction. Hospitality and retail at street level is a different matter entirely, and that is where CRAR in the EC postcodes usually does its work.
The procedure itself, from the Notice of Enforcement to the sale of goods, is set out on our page on commercial rent arrears recovery. If CRAR may not suit your tenant in East Central London, our guide to how to recover commercial rent arrears sets it beside forfeiture, a money claim and a statutory demand.
What tends to matter locally
Check the rent deposit deed first. Most City leases carry one, and drawing on the deposit is faster, cheaper and less damaging to the relationship than enforcement. We would rather tell a landlord to do that than take an instruction that was never necessary.
Then check the guarantor. A City tenant is frequently a subsidiary with a parent company guarantee behind it, and pursuing the guarantor may recover more than taking control of goods ever would. CRAR is a remedy against goods on the premises, and in EC1 to EC4 those goods are often worth far less than the arrears.
The serviced office point applies here more than anywhere. A large share of small City occupiers hold licences rather than leases, and a licence will not support CRAR at all.
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 East Central London we plan it around the occupier’s hours rather than our own, and we will say honestly whether a visit is likely to achieve anything before you pay for one.
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 identical across 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.