Recovering commercial rent in East London
East London holds the widest spread of commercial tenancy in the capital. Canary Wharf is corporate office stock on a scale found nowhere else outside the City. A few miles north, Hackney Wick and Bow are converted industrial buildings let to makers, studios and small trade. Further east again, Barking, Beckton and Rainham are straightforward distribution and industrial property.
Office arrears come from Canary Wharf, Stratford and the Olympic Park fringe. Independent retail and leisure run through Hackney, Shoreditch’s eastern edge, Walthamstow, Leyton and Ilford. Industrial and trade property sits at Hackney Wick, Bow, Barking, Beckton, Dagenham and out along the A13.
That range means the same instruction can be strong or hopeless depending on the postcode. A Barking distribution unit holds goods. A Canary Wharf floor holds leased equipment and the landlord’s fit-out. Hackney Wick sits awkwardly between the two and needs the lease read before anything else.
What tends to matter locally
Hackney Wick and Bow are the licence problem in its purest form. A great deal of that converted industrial space is let as studio or managed workspace under a licence to occupy, and CRAR requires a lease of commercial premises. A licence will not support it at all, and the goods in the unit frequently belong to the operator rather than the occupier.
At the other end, Canary Wharf leases are professionally drawn and almost always carry a rent deposit and often a parent company guarantee. Drawing on the deposit or pursuing the guarantor will usually recover more, faster, than taking control of goods that were never the tenant’s to begin with.
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 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.