Richard is a Partner in the Retail team.
Experienced in the non-contentious aspects of the landlord and tenant relationship, including initial lease agreements, lease renewals, licences to assign, sublet or carry out alterations, deeds of variation to cover a change of use, holding over arrangements for 1954 Act contracted out tenancies, lease termination formalities and the operation of contractual break clauses.
Richard also advises on the acquisition and disposal of commercial property, particularly for pension funds and other investment groups, together with large-scale development projects and refinancing deals and assists the owners and occupiers of industrial estates, out of town warehousing units and purpose built office buildings in their property requirements.
The majority of his work is for national retail tenants taking leases of retail units within major UK shopping centres, although he also regularly acts for national tenants taking leases of large scale units on edge of town and out of town retail parks. Notable clients include The White Company, Heals and Dunelm.
Recent examples of how Richard has supported clients include:
- enabling the seller of development land to maximise the return on their investment by retaining ownership of the upper floor of one of the new buildings, a suite of residential flats to sell the same independently from the remainder of the site;
- protecting the interests of a national retail tenant which was about to sign a lease for new flagship offices which the landlord did not fully own, and which could have exposed our client to significant financial risk had it not been spotted and rectified before the lease was completed;
- ensuring the tenant of a nightclub was not exposed to an unnecessary stamp duty land tax bill by restructuring a lease agreement so that the refit works the landlord had agreed to fund, and which the tenant was obliged to repay with interest, were documented as a formal loan arrangement rather than higher rent; and
- negotiating the purchase of a locomotive and rolling stock repair facility on behalf of a consortium of buyers who required specialist advice on a range of covenants, peculiar to the rail industry, which affected the facility and permitted land use.