Simon Robinson

Expertise

Simon has been working as a real estate lawyer for almost 20 years, based in Birmingham for all of that time. For the last 15 years or so, he has been focussed on house building and urban residential development. His work in this sector includes regeneration projects with public sector counterparties, partnerships working and joint ventures. He specialises in strategic land projects including option agreements, hybrid option/ promotion agreements and collaboration arrangements to deliver complex, multi-party and multi-phase development schemes.

His experience in the sector has also been honed acting for leading land promoters, development companies of registered providers, consortia of landowners and for Homes England – in particular on one of their largest and most ambitious site assembly projects. Simon is commercially focussed, with a straightforward and constructive approach. He recognises that for deals to be successful in the long run, it is most effective to build positive relationships and a culture of positive teamworking with project partners.

Simon has worked with many of the national and regional housebuilders such as Vistry, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon and Thakeham Homes leading land promoters such as Richborough, Gleeson, Obsidian and Landra Developments urban developers such Muse, LCR, Cordia UK and Prosperity Developments as well as advising Homes England on acquisition and strategic land assembly projects.

How do you help clients?

Simon helps clients to deliver challenging development projects, often via a long-term collaboration with diverse stakeholders who may have quite different backgrounds and priorities.

Simon can help clients work through all sorts of tricky legal and commercial issues such as equalisation, overages and consortium arrangements. But perhaps even more valuable that this, is that he operates with a manner and approach which supports your desire to build positive working relationships with your diverse range of project partners. This ultimately makes your project much more likely to succeed and may perhaps unlock opportunities for future projects.

Experience

1. Leading the acquisition team for a national housebuilder acquiring a complex brownfield site for around 2,000 new homes in the Midlands.
2. Leading teams providing legal support to our leading land promoter client on numerous sites nationwide, including two of its most long running and complicated projects. Finally, after 6-7 years of work, these resulted in sales for the landowner customers of in excess of £75m of value whilst unlocking the delivery of approximately one thousand new homes.
3. Leading the team advising a consortium of landowners on the sale of an agricultural estate in Staffordshire to a national housebuilder. Completed in late 2024 this transaction achieved a land value of approximately £30m for the owners and the resolution of a project that had been ongoing for well over 10 years.
4. Advising the strategic land department of one of the PLC housebuilders on the assembly of a multiphase strategic development in Bedfordshire. The project site is owned by at least five different landowners, including the local authority, and must be promoted in phases and partly in collaboration with a land promoter. In addition to acquisition work, supporting the client with collaboration agreements, neutralising identified title risks and with varying historic agreements as the project has evolved.
5. Appointed to support a new land promotion business with securing new projects via promotion agreements over numerous sites in the Midlands, South West and South East.