Recovering commercial rent in West Central London
West Central London is a small footprint carrying an unusual density of commercial tenancies: professional offices above ground-floor retail, media and publishing, and a concentration of restaurants and bars serving the theatres. Rateable values are high and so are rents, which means arrears build to a serious figure quickly: a single quarter missed on a Covent Garden restaurant is rarely a small sum.
Most of our instructions here come from three kinds of property. Upper-floor office suites around Holborn, Bloomsbury and Kingsway, often let to small professional firms on short leases. Ground-floor retail and hospitality in Covent Garden, Seven Dials and around the Strand. And the media and creative occupiers spread through Fitzrovia and the Bloomsbury fringe.
The mix matters for enforcement. A restaurant holds fit-out, kitchen equipment and stock on the premises. A four-desk consultancy on the third floor of a converted Georgian terrace may hold almost nothing that belongs to it: the furniture is often the landlord’s and the laptops are leased. We will tell you which of those you have before you instruct us, because it changes what CRAR can realistically achieve.
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 West 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
Two things come up repeatedly in WC1 and WC2. The first is the serviced and managed office, where the occupier holds a licence rather than a lease. CRAR requires a lease of commercial premises; a licence to occupy will not support it, and the goods in the room frequently belong to the operator rather than the occupier. That needs establishing on day one, not on the doorstep.
The second is mixed use. A great deal of West Central London property has residential flats above the commercial ground floor. CRAR is not available where any part of the demised premises is let as a dwelling, and the demise is what governs, not what the building looks like from the street.
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 West 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.