15/10/2021
In the recently published Legal 500 2022 directory rankings, Bevan Brittan’s national Construction practice once again performed strongly, maintaining its Top Tier ranking in the South West as well as its rankings in Yorkshire and the highly competitive London market. We caught up with Bevan Brittan’s Head of Construction, Andrew Tobin, to uncover the story behind this success.
What makes this a standout year for the Construction practice?
It’s been an incredibly busy year for our Construction practice across the country. We’ve been advising clients on the delivery of some significant projects often in challenging circumstances due to the pandemic.
We are delighted to be recognised as a Top Tier Construction team in the South West, identifying the strong leadership of Louise Robling and Jonathan Turner in the markets within which we work, across housing, local government, healthcare, higher education and our wider commercial client base.
We have also seen excellent results in Leeds this year. Judith Hopper has established, in a short space of time, a recognised construction disputes practice. Recently, Niamh Batterton has joined as a Legal Director and she will lead our transactional offering in Leeds.
Over the last 12 months the Construction practice, alongside our Property colleagues, has been recognised in a number of awards with both nominations and wins. These include the Insider Property Awards series and Legal Advisor of the Year at the Bristol Property Awards.
What types of cases and projects have you supported over the past 12 months?
We have advised on a number of joint ventures for residential-led developments during the year, a strength of the team. A great example was our work for Network Homes on its development of part of the Northwick Park Hospital site in partnership with the local NHS Trust, Brent Council and University of Westminster. Our experience in the Social Housing, Health and Local Government sectors has all been required to support Network Homes to deliver 654 new homes.
The Health sector remains a major focus. We have supported a number of NHS Trusts, including Barts Health at the Royal London Hospital, on urgent refurbishment projects to build ward capacity for Covid patients. We are advising four of the first wave of projects under the New Hospital Programme, including London hospitals at Whipps Cross and Hillingdon. We are extremely proud of our position as leading legal advisors to the NHS as it enters a period of significant capital investment.
Looking ahead, what do you hope to achieve as a team over the next 12 months?
As well as the arrival of Niamh Batterton, we have recently been joined by new Construction Partners Sarah Wilson in Leeds and Helen Andrews in Birmingham providing further investment in those two locations for our clients. These are exciting times for Construction at Bevan Brittan; we have plans to continue to expand and grow the practice significantly in the next three years.
