Richard advises on a broad range of commercial property transactions with a particular interest in site acquisition or disposal for redevelopment purposes. He also has wide experience in lease management matters acting both for tenants (including major retail clients) and for landlords including owners of major business parks. This type of work includes new leases, renewals, regrants and regears, variations and also hybrid commercial agreements such as café concession agreements.

Richard also has an interest in the ecclesiastical, educational and charitable sectors and works on these matters with the Oxford Ecclesiastical team. He has worked on school statutory transfers previously and also on Academy conversion, transfer and re-brokering matters. He has also acted for charities on property acquisition and disposal matters.

Recent Experience

• Acting for the landowner in respect of a proposed conditional sale of land in Oxfordshire for redevelopment as a high specification, low density housing development
• Acting for a high-profile restaurant chain in respect of several freehold or long leasehold acquisitions to support its site acquisition programme
• Acting for the owners of business parks in relation to leasehold management matters including leases to incoming tenants, renewals, surrenders, variations and licences
• Acting for a landlord developing a small trade park estate in Bicester, taking the matter from initial discussions through precedent set up, highways and s278 agreement matters, estate services easements and wayleaves and construction warranties and then proceeding to the negotiation and grant of leases once planning and development had progressed
• Assisting the freeholder in respect of a large multi-tenanted unit in west London. Initially a renewal lease was negotiated with a household name retail tenant, including taking on a new lease of additional space separately. Thereafter acting for the client in an auction sale of the freehold which was also subject to several long residential leases in respect of which full due diligence needed to be carried out
• Acting for a charity client in the purchase of a former Church of England school site in east Oxford from its trustees. This was a complex deal involving proposed redevelopment of part, some shared use, boundary and lease issues. The purchase was part-funded by specialist lending for which lender due diligence was required
• Acting for an Oxford University college on the auction sale of a property held by it as an investment, subject to tenancies
• Acting for an Academy Trust on the property aspects of re-brokering of 16 school sites to a new Academy Trust, on tight deadlines imposed by the Department for Education