Richard is a Partner, based in our Leeds office covering the North of England where he specialises in lease consultancy and valuation work. He qualified as a Charted Surveyor in 1999 and has a wide range of professional practice experience including rating, asset valuations, lease consultancy and town and country planning advice. He concentrates on the retail/restaurant sector advising clients on both high street and out of town retail properties.
Prior to joining Newmark’s Leeds office, he worked in the Retail Department of our West End office dealing with rating and lease consultancy across the South East of England. He also provides expert witness reports for rent review and lease renewal dispute resolution throughout Yorkshire and the North East. He provides Red Book valuations and advises occupiers for company accounting purposes as well as banks and building societies for secured lending in the retail sector.
Richard has advised WH Smith, Laura Ashley and Pizza Express on their out-of-town retail portfolios across the North of England, on issues such as lease consultancy instructions including redevelopment/relocation advice upon lease expiry. Richard specialises in rent review and lease renewal advice for both landlord and tenant clients.
Key clients
- Costa Coffee
- WH Smith
- Phones 4u
- Laura Ashley
- Byron Burgers
- Pizza Express
- ASK and Zizzi
- Private individuals
Recent projects
- Richard advised WH Smith with regard to their lease renewal advice at the Cleveland Centre, Middlesbrough. This was an oversized store where the retail market has also weakened. Following negotiations with the landlord, he reduced the rent from £350,000 pa to £135,000 pa, saving the client £1.075m over the five years of their lease.
- He provided Costa with advice on the re-gear of their store at St Mary’s Place, Newcastle. The property was over-rented, and we advised Costa to serve the break notice to renegotiate terms. The landlord agreed to a new lease and reduced the rent by £10,000 pa, saving the client £50,000 over the term of their lease.
- Richard acted for ASK on their rent review in Durham where the landlord had quoted a significant increase in the rent of 25%. Following extensive negotiations with the landlord we advised our client to proceed to 3rd party determination. The outcome reduced the increase to only 5%, which saved the client over £75,000 over the remainder of their lease.