Richard Bate

Richard Bate is a specialist and leading practitioner in the arena of residential development with over 30 years' of experience. He helps clients to acquire and dispose of all manner of residential and mixed-use development schemes, in particular large-scale consortium developments and strategic land in all forms, regardless of diversity or complexity. Richard's team also helps clients to secure all planning and infrastructure agreements required to implement these developments.

He is at the forefront of the latest developments in the house-building sector, which allows him to guide his clients to win, implement and maximise the profit from the most complex and demanding development opportunities.

Among other things some of the challenges being confronted by Richard's clients include developing communities with green/clean energy sources and using net zero carbon and new construction techniques such as modular construction. Richard and his team have been particularly proud to assist L&G Modular on their first few schemes of development and are presently involved in two particularly complex schemes in Wolverhampton and Manchester. These have involved bringing together experts from across our firm covering many specialised areas of work which complement core real estate including: construction, environmental and planning expertise. Both will contribute towards the levelling up agenda and the regeneration (very significantly in the case of Wolverhampton) to the communities in which they are situated.

Richard's working life is dominated by helping people to work together collaboratively in their common interest. Many of the schemes brought to him require sensitive negotiations between consortia of land owners and developers, and he strives to find a balance in which parties on all sides get something out of the deal. This is important given the duration, complexity and size of his typical caseload.

He also uses his team – which is at the cutting edge of the industry - to deliver market leading solutions at cost-effective prices to our clients, tailored carefully to the demands of each situation. There is no better example of this than Richard's creation of a brand new legal system to assemble a series of interlocking strategic land agreements for Thakeham Homes to support one of the UK's first zero-carbon communities in South-West Cambridge. This has the potential to be a new town with plans for 25,000 net zero-carbon homes including 10,000 affordable homes providing a biodiversity net gain of at least 20 per cent. The legal machinery to deliver this scheme is wholly new and involved the combination of market testing AND equalisation of value and costs which we believe has not been achieved anywhere else in the UK.

Clients

Richard acts for many of the UK's leading housebuilders, including: Miller Homes, Taylor Wimpey, Grainger plc, Gleeson Land, Thakeham Homes, Persimmon, Charterhouse, CALA and various Legal & General Homes entities.

Recognition

Recommended by both Chambers UK and The Legal 500 UK:

"Richard is an absolute star at what he does."

Chambers UK, 2021

"Stands out for his knowledge in strategic land site assembly work, consortium transactions and equalisation issues."

Legal 500, 2021