Property Development Senior Associate – 8+ years PQE
Location: Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds
Contract Type: Permanent
The Brief
We are looking to recruit an England & Wales qualified lawyer with at least 8 years PQE to join our fantastic, growing mixed-use development team in Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds.
We are looking for a lawyer who focusses on development work, ideally large scale, mixed-use and/or residential-led schemes, who can take a lead role in delivering projects for our fantastic portfolio of both public sector and private sector clients.
The increasing relationship between the public and private sector is at the heart of our development practice so the work you will do encompasses the largest, most complex and most exciting regeneration and development projects for a mix of public and private sector clients across England and Wales, including running/participating in regulated procurement processes, acquisitions and disposals, collaborations and equalisation arrangements with other landowners, securing funding and investment, negotiating development agreements, master development agreements and lease structuring, and dealing with the property components of new corporate joint ventures.
You will have the opportunity to be part of transactional teams supporting clients across the UK working alongside colleagues from our other offices and benefiting from our internal legal professional support network.
About the Team
You will be joining our Property Development & Investment Team in Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds. Whichever office you join you would be part of our UK Property Group (which operates as a national team, rather than in regional silos), which means we regularly work with colleagues across our network of 8 offices in all the major business centres.
Our Property Development & Investment Team, more broadly, advises clients across the whole spectrum of their real estate requirements, covering acquisition, development, funding, investment and asset management requirements, with particular focus on major logistics and manufacturing projects, alternative asset classes (hotels, student accommodation and BtR), private sector residential development, public sector led development opportunities, new business park developments, Grade A office developments and investments, major infrastructure projects and nuclear sector support.
Our focus within our UK teams on a number of growth markets means that we are well placed to navigate and weather the volatile economic conditions the UK is currently experiencing and provide an excellent platform for any aspiring real estate lawyer to build a long term and secure career with the firm, itself a £500m+ turnover business with a global focus on a handful of key sectors, including Real Estate.
You would be working with Tom Johnson and Rebecca Rowley, who are based in our Birmingham office, and Anne Bowden, who is based in our Leeds office. All work together to service regeneration and major development projects across the public and private sectors, often through joint ventures, collaborations and/or regulated procurements. Tom, Rebecca and Anne work daily on a cross-office basis, including with several development lawyers and planning lawyers in Manchester. This means you could join any of the 3 regional offices in England and have colleagues working on similar transactions, or indeed the same transaction, around you.
You would be working with colleagues to service regeneration and major development projects across the public and private sectors, often through joint ventures, collaborations and/or regulated procurements. The team work daily on a cross-office basis, including with several development lawyers and planning lawyers in Manchester. You could join any of the 3 regional offices in England and have colleagues working on similar transactions, or indeed the same transaction, around you.
We have a “single team” approach to working alongside our market-leading colleagues who enable us to provide an all-round service on the most complex and high value deals, covering planning, procurement, subsidy control, construction, environmental, CPO, energy and dispute resolution issues.
Work highlights
1. London Borough of Wandsworth: for ten years now we have been advising the Council on its two largest Council housing estate regeneration projects
2. London Borough of Southwark: we advise the Council on the £2bn Canada Water regeneration scheme in partnership with British Land
3. Silvertown: advising Lendlease (in JV with Starwood Capital) on the delivery of this £3.5bn new community in London Docklands
4. Smithfield Birmingham: advising Lendlease on the planning strategy for this £2bn residential led redevelopment of a major part of the city centre
5. Arena Central: advising Kier Property Developments on the delivery of this £700m new business quarter in the centre of Birmingham
6. Circa 25 local authorities on structuring and delivering corporate JV’s (LLPs) for delivery of regeneration: our multi-disciplinary team is the market leading team in the country with our partners being recognised as national leading specialists
7. Langarth Garden Village: advising Cornwall Council as landowner on planning, delivering and investing in a landmark new community of c.3550 homes, student accommodation, extra care, P&R, schools, energy centre and extensive greenspace and community facilities
8. Lovell: advising on their Thamesmead JV with Peabody to deliver two phases of the Peabody regen project
9. Homes England: advising on the provision of grant funding through their £multimillion HIF and (now) BIL programmes to facilitate housing delivery
Key Clients
10. Many London Boroughs including Westminster, Lambeth, Brent, Camden, Islington, Haringey, Barnet and Enfield
11. Homes England
12. St Modwen
13. Birmingham City Council
14. Harworth Estates
15. Lovell Partnerships
16. Bricks Capital
17. Muse
18. HBD (Henry Boot)
19. Urban & Civic
20. IM Properties
21. Lendlease
22. Manchester City Council
The Candidate Required
We are now looking to appoint an 8+ years PQE property lawyer to join our team. Required experience/attributes include:
23. experience of advising developers/landowners procuring development of their land, ideally for large-scale, complex mixed use or residential led development
24. experience of working with public sector bodies, ideally local authorities, on regeneration projects, ideally including running procurement processes
25. a headline understanding of subsidy control and procurement law, to enable you to engage our specialist teams at the appropriate time
26. experience gained in a large commercial firm, or in-house legal team
27. a problem solver, who wants to work with the clients to understand their project and help them find the best way to deliver that
28. a proven team player, able to forge strong working relationships with colleagues in an agile environment
29. experience managing input from junior lawyers and training them
30. excellent academics, technically accomplished, with sound commercial judgement
31. the interpersonal skills necessary for developing and managing on-going relationships with an existing client base (and work collaboratively with other parties to help deliver development schemes) as well as helping to win and grow new opportunities