Property

Our clients include organisations with one operational up to hundreds of operational and investment properties with everything in between. There are many clients with nationwide property portfolios. Often these are mixed between the operational properties (e.g. offices, hospitals, schools, colleges, shops, hospices, nursing homes, care villages) and investment properties (of all types).

The work on operational properties is principally directed at the development of operational delivery of mission, including property development, construction as well as the usual sale/purchase/leasing arrangements.

Where properties are investment properties we deal again with sales and purchases and all the usual management matters of licences to assign/underlet/alter as well as lease renewals and dealing with any debt collection or other landlord and tenant dispute resolution.

Whereas most significant firms will have some experience of handling this type of work or commercial or private investor clients (and indeed we ourselves have a wide range of work of this type especially for the private investor within our Commercial Client Team) in all these aspects of property investment work our Charity Property Team has day to day hands on experience of handling such matters for clients in this sector, with immediate knowledge of their particular technical requirements and operational approaches - we know what matters to people in this sector as well as the detail of the special legal requirements.

The work of the team on investment properties includes all nature of lettings, be it office, retail, industrial, residential or agricultural, though our experience is that clients have found returns have tended to be best in the earlier rather than latter sectors.

We also act for funders, both grant giving bodies and banks, in relation to financing of operators in the sector. We have personal contacts with the principals within the specialist teams at the main funders to the sector.

We believe we can provide effective legal and practical expertise in all the above areas arising from the large range and volume of work we carry out within our dedicated Charity Group, within which the Charity Property Team operates.

We are also, through leading membership of professional groups, seeking to improve the legal context for our clients in the sector. Notably proposals for improvements of the Charities Bill, the SDLT regime and Planning Gain Supplement proposals have been promoted through the work as part of the Charity Law Association.

In their final comments the judges said 'Stone King place charity work at the centre of their practice and having concluded the apparently seamless integration of two highly renowned charity teams they deserve top marks for entrepreneurship and innovation.'