Experienced Retail and Leisure Agency Surveyor with a useful background in residential, development and investment – winner of back-to-back Estates Gazette Dealmaker Awards as the most active retail agent in the UK in both 2022 and 2023.

I have been with FHP for 14 years and am part of the Retail and Leisure Agency team advising on leasing, sale, asset management and acquisitions. I cover a wide spectrum of property including High Street, Retail Parks, Leisure Schemes, Shopping Centres, Neighbourhood Parades and Out of Town.

I pride myself on my pro-active, honest approach and determination to get deals over the line, delivering the best results for my clients.  I work for a range of clients from corporate funds through to private individuals, some of which include Tesco, DTZ Investors, Blackrock, LCP/MCore, Evolve Estates, Threadneedle, Nottingham City Council and ALB Group.

I’m a Director within the FHP Retail and Leisure Team focused on Roadside Retail, Development, Shopping Centre and High Street leasing and acquisitions for a number of retail and leisure clients across the Midlands and throughout the rest of the UK.

I act on behalf of a number of tenants including Starbucks, Mother Hubbards Fish & Chips, Relic x Hooked Vintage Clothing, Simmons Bakers and NRG Fitness in terms of acquisitions.

I act on behalf of the Victoria Centre, Derbion Centre and a number of regional shopping centres, neighbourhood schemes and high street and roadside retail and leisure space on behalf of landlords across the region.

I look forward to discussing any ideas with you in greater detail, whether that be for an acquisition, disposal or development, please give me a call.

I am predominantly involved in the office and industrial occupier and investment sectors advising in the leasing, sale and acquisition of property across the East Midlands and more specifically Nottinghamshire. I also advise on industrial developments and office to residential conversion opportunities.

Within the Professional Services Department, my day-to-day role involves dealing principally in Property Valuations and Investment Acquisition. I’m also trained as a Level 4 EPC Energy Professor to add to the range of services we’re able to provide our customers.

I’ve been part of the Nottingham Property Market for many years and am also now actively involved in the Newark Retail Market. As such I have many contacts and have advised clients in Investment Acquisition and in the Letting and Investment sale of Fat Face on Middlegate in 2010.

I qualified as a Level 4 Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Surveyor in 2008 and now undertake a range of assessments on all types of commercial buildings, ranging from a bar/restaurant complex to large and small industrial units, and a retail parade. My current role also includes bank Valuation Work, Investment Sales and advising in Property Litigation.

FHP are the dominant Retail and Leisure Agent within the Midlands, winning the EGi East Midlands most active agent award for the last 14 years. We offer a unique service to our clients with our lateral thinking and in-depth knowledge of the market given our presence throughout the Midlands, by reducing voids and driving value and returns for our clients.

Looking back, I feel that I’ve learned considerably more in the last near decade or so that at any other time in my 46-year career. That’s because at FHP, I’m surrounded by surveyors who are highly intelligent, highly motivated and extremely knowledgeable.

I buy and sell commercial investments and now sell a number of residential investments, mainly within a 40 or 50 mile radius of Nottingham, although I have bought properties on the south coast and elsewhere. FHP has helped me broaden my investment knowledge in relation to other markets.

I have been able to advise certain wealthy individuals on a considerable amount of investment and development funding situations whereby we have provided the finance for small time developers to be involved in projects far greater than any bank would have allowed them. This has given us an unrivalled expertise in the funding and secondary market within the East Midlands area. A large number of those projects have been highly successful although, admittedly, during the present economic times one or two schemes have been “moth balled” but however other ones are ongoing and are, (despite the present market conditions), now letting out well. However we are now coming out of the recession and are looking at pre-letting these outstanding development sites.

We believe that the market is slowly improving and there are certain special opportunities where we are taking advantage of market conditions to be able to buy sites and go and carry out developments.

In more recent years we have confined the activities to purely selling and buying investments. During the last 12 months we have received a considerable number of instructions to sell investments and providing they are correctly priced they do sell readily well.

Throughout my 11 years at FHP I thoroughly enjoyed working here with the other Surveyors and have hopefully been able to add to the profile of FHP in terms of the investment market. Despite the present economic climate we probably do more investment work than any of the other agents in the Nottingham area.

Life changes through being in recession since August 2007 and recessions don’t go on forever. We are slowly coming out of recessions, there are lots more lettings albeit soft deals but soon the development cycle will start again even if it is some 12/24 months away and there are lots of opportunities. The current availability of all the main sectors i.e. retail, office and industrial is shrinking and this will consequently lead to an increase in hardening in rents, disappearing incentives as far as the tenants are concerned, which will lead to the development cycle starting again.

Without doubt, FHP is the dominant agent in the Industrial/Warehouse market throughout the East Midlands and I’m proud of the fact that the strength of this domination has been mirrored by my rise through the ranks at FHP.

Whilst still keeping my hand in with Office deals (both acquisitions and disposal) my time is spent mainly advising ‘big shed’ occupiers, landlords and developers, but still taking care of owner occupiers in both corporate and family-run businesses.

Always changing, always needing to think on your feet and respond, the property world is no different to any other strand of business. I’m proud of my involvement in the development of any number of new Industrial and Warehouse schemes during the heady days of 2007. But looking back, I am as equally proud now of deals completed during the recession and the very tough times we all faced, when smaller scale clients say a big ‘thank you’ for finding them an occupier for their pension-fund-owned unit.

Now with the market returning there is a real buzz in the sector again, design and build deals are being done, developers are talking, but as yet not acting upon, their desire to speculatively develop and I am shifting more ‘big sheds’ than ever. It seems for the next year or two lack of stock rather than lack of demand will be our key problem to solve.

I set up FHP back in 1990 alongside John and Brian, and I head up the Retail and Leisure Team who are one of the most dominant retail agency teams in within the East Midlands, and certainly the most active.

I went on to establish FHP Living, which is now one of the pre-eminant residential agencies in Nottingham, covering Land, Sales, Lettings, Management and Development. Our commercial and a residential companies now work seamlessly alongside each other, meaning we’ve been involved with some of the most forward thinking developments in Nottingham from the initial stages right through to sales and completion, including Trent Basin.

Prior to setting up FHP, I was the Director of Nottingham Development Enterprise Limited, a public/private sector organisation, and prior to that was a Governor of Nottingham High School and was Chairman of the Trustees at St Joseph’s School. Having graduated from Nottingham Trent Polytechnic in 1984, I previously acted as member of the Alumni Board at Nottingham Trent University, and was schooled and grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

Having the privilege of a strong Admin and Back Up Team means that whilst I am responsible for the strategic thinking of the business, I still spend the majority of my time doing what I love, which is property deals.

The team mentality of FHP and strength in depth and quality of the people that we have in each of the individual teams means that whilst I do not handle all of the day to day instructions I know that our Client’s properties are in good hands.  I am still in touch with what’s happening through our team meetings every week and by sitting in amongst the agency teams on a day to day basis.

We have retained our entrepreneurial skills and whilst our teams are sectorally based we encourage a broad depth of knowledge – this has been fundamental to FHP’s continued organic growth through the worst recession that I have personally experienced.

Somewhat perversely I was personally involved in some of my largest deals during the recessionary period.  We are now seeing a greater cross spread of activity and demand across all sectors and I sincerely hope that the global / European economic uncertainty does not hold us back from continuing to achieve steady growth.

I do see however a current challenge as to how the market can provide the range and breadth of new business space development that the regional markets require to meet the emerging demand from the indigenous markets.