Our development specialists deal with all aspects of property development work from helping you to acquire sites, secure funding, and dealing with the property aspects of building out and then disposing of completed sites. Property development can be difficult to navigate. Our team has delivered developments of all types of complexity over decades, so bring valuable experience of dealing with what can be challenging issues in differing economic climates. Our aim is to be part of your trusted development team, so that we understand your business and what is important to you. We can then tailor our services so that what you need is delivered by the right people at best value.

Preparing for Development


We regularly advise landowners on preparing sites for development to ensure best value is achieved. Working in conjunction with our Property Litigation team we can help you by:

  • Reviewing title and other property information to identify issues which could impact on the ability to develop. Doing this before a site is offered for sale means we can identify the best solution to deal with development restraints heling you to maximise value and sell quickly.
  • Advising on strategies for and taking steps to obtain vacant possession so that development can begin. This can include moving occupiers to other appropriate locations within your portfolio where needed.
  • We can also advise you on the best lease arrangements to use to facilitate gaining possession, should you wish to generate an income from your project while the necessary consents and arrangements for development to take place are being made.
  • Identifying gaps in title and advising on how title can be secured to deliver the development site.

Once your site is ready for sale our team of development experts can guide you through the disposal process. For more information about selling your site visit our “Selling a Commercial Property” page by clicking here

Entering into an Agreement


Developers will need to agree terms that give them security over a site before they incur substantial expenditure. The contractual certainty they need can be delivered using several different types of arrangement including:

  • Exclusivity and lock out agreements – these can offer the developer a period to complete their property due diligence and site investigations, safe in the knowledge that the landowner cannot deal with any other potential parties without breaching the agreement and incurring financial penalties. In return for granting exclusivity the developer may pay the landowner a fee, or commit to incurring expenditure on its due diligence, some of which they may be prepared to share if the transaction doesn’t proceed. Exclusivity agreements may also include confidentiality provisions, which can be advantageous where the parties want to keep the terms or even the existence of the potential transaction under wraps.
  • Option agreements – are useful if the developer needs a guaranteed right to buy a property, should the circumstances to enable their development to take place arise, but without any contractual obligation to proceed, so they can simply walk away if they don’t. Typically, in return for granting an option over a property and tying it up for a period, a landowner should expect to receive a non-refundable option fee.
  • Conditional contracts - allow a landowner and developer to agree terms for a sale with completion being triggered if the agreed preconditions to development are satisfied (e.g. satisfactory planning permission is obtained). Where a sale is conditional on certain matters, care needs to be taken to ensure that the contract is tightly drafted to give certainty that the obligation to complete the purchase will arise when the conditions are met.
  • Promotion agreements – these enable a landowner and developer to team up and work together in a development project. The landowner commits its land to the project for an agreed period (often several years) and in return the developer agrees to promote the site through the planning process. Sometimes the developer will have to start by seeking a reallocation of land in the local authority’s local plan to enable the desired development to take place. In all cases the developer will need to secure one or more planning consents for the development. Once planning is in place the developer will market the site with a view to securing a sale for the best price. At the conclusion of the project, the parties share the proceeds generated from the sale. The developer, having taken what can be significant commercial risk by bank rolling the planning and disposal process, with no guarantee that the project will achieve the desired outcome, will want to recover its costs and also share in the profit that is generated.
  • Joint venture agreements – these enable a landowner and developer to carry out a development project together. The landowner puts its land into the project while the developer pays for and runs the development works. When the completed development is sold, the proceeds are shared either using agreed percentages or according to the value of the parties’ respective “investments” into the project.

There are also circumstances where a developer will commit to completing building works, either:

  • as part of agreeing to grant another party a lease, in which case the development obligations are included in the agreement for lease, or
  • ancillary to, or as part of a sale, where the developer sells an undeveloped site and then procures completion of building works for the buyer. In this case a separate development agreement is often used to document the development provisions.

These types of agreement are extremely complicated, and expert legal advice is essential. The arrangements need to be tailored to the property being developed, the terms agreed between the parties and the complexity of the final development and any disposal arrangements. If the terms are not carefully documented, you may not get the result you are expecting.

Delivering development


Our work does not end once an agreement for development is entered into. We can also assist with any queries that may arise in relation to the interpretation of the agreement and completion of any procedures required by it (for example, serving notices and dealing with satisfaction of conditions).

An integral part of any development is the infrastructure – a completed site needs its utilities and services to work. Connecting a new site to adopted highways and drains and bringing in utilities necessitates agreements with statutory undertakers. Our lawyers who have expertise in relation to utilities and infrastructure can assist with the review, negotiation and completion of these documents. For more information, please visit our Utilities and Infrastructure page.

Disposals


We can also assist with any disposal of the completed development, where that is required. In addition to dealing with all of the usual requirements on a disposal, as detailed on our Selling a Commercial Property page we can also:

  • Provide tactical advice on structuring disposals to ensure maximum value is delivered, whilst protecting retained land interests.
  • Prepare appropriate disposal precedents which provide for the grant and reservation of all relevant rights and impose obligations to ensure smooth running of the relationship and connectivity between the site and any land retained.
  • Documenting future management arrangements so that they run smoothly.

In some cases, whether you are a landowner or a developer, your final sale(s) may involve deferred or contingent consideration – with extra payments becoming due in certain circumstances. We can also assist you with these arrangements, which can be covered in the disposal transfers themselves or using separate deeds imposing what are known as overage or clawback arrangements.

Throughout your project we will work closely in partnership with your professional team and also with the other specialists involved in planning, rights to light, environmental and construction law, managing the legal side of this where needed to ensure a seamless delivery of services.

If you would like us to help with your development, please get in touch.

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