Giles Gillingham leads the firm's Garden Centre and Horticultural Trade Legal Team and has many years experience of acting for owners of Garden Centres and Nurseries and providing legal advice across a wide range of issues.
Much of his team's work involves buying and selling Garden Centres and wholesale and retail nurseries, concession leases/licences, corporate refinancing and preparing planning agreements. Giles has also acted as an Expert Witness on a case involving the modification of covenants in a planning agreement relating to a garden centre which helped to more closely define the nature of use as a garden centre.
We broke new ground in 1997 as the first lawyers to exhibit at GLEE. We have been active members of the Garden Centre Association and the Horticultural Trade Association and were commissioned by the HTA to write a guide to concession leases. Our dedicated concession lease, with turnover rent and rent indexation provisions, has been used extensively for garden centre owners including on the set up of a multi-let garden centre and for a wide range of concessions such as aquatics, pets, café/restaurant, conservatories, crafts, and farm shops. Our close involvement with and understanding of the needs of the Trade gives us a unique position from which we can assist your business.
These are some of the areas where the team can offer legal advice:
Company/Commercial
- Business sales and purchases (shares/asset)
- Standard Terms of Business
- Commercial agreements
- Contracts with suppliers
- Business structure (company/partnership) and shareholder/partnership agreements
- Terms and conditions of funding/refinancing
Property
- Acquisitions and disposals (freehold or leasehold) and sale and leaseback
- New-build projects
- Planning agreements/obligations/lawful use certificates
- Concession leases and licences
- VAT implications of property transactions
- Commercial mortgages
Employment Law
- Drafting Standard Terms of Employment
- Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE) Regulations
- Health and Safety at Work issues
- Redundancy and unfair dismissal
- Compromise agreements
Dispute Resolution
- Accidents at work claims
- Alternative dispute resolution
- Tenant default, levying distress for rent and other remedies
Examples of work we have done in this sector include:
Nationwide concession operator
- A Portfolio lease renewals of stores and subsequent intra-group assignments
- Restructuring the business from partnerships to Limited Liability Partnerships
Award winning urban Garden Centre
- Complex business purchase requiring a Certificate of Lawful Use to regularise the permitted planning use, title rectification and lease renegotiation
Concession operator
- Advising on a dispute about occupation rights in the absence of any written agreement, and a claim for rent arrears
Home Counties plant nursery
- Securing variations to an onerous lease thereby enhancing the value of the business
New Concession/franchise company
- Preparing Terms and Conditions of Business
Sussex grower
- Advice on environmental contamination issues
Nationwide garden centre group
- Acting as an Expert Witness on a case involving the modification of covenants in a planning agreement relating to a garden centre which helped to more closely define the nature of use as a garden centre
Multi-let West Midlands Garden Centre
- Advising on planning implications and assisting in securing a condition-free planning consent for use as a Garden Centre
- Devising and implementing a lettings strategy with an anchor tenant and concessions including pets, aquatics, antiques, craft workshops, hard landscaping, greenhouses and conservatories
- Advising on management issues e.g. service charges, and an advertising programme
- Granting a mix of long-term leases and short-term lettings contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 with market rent reviews, rent indexation and turnover rents
South West England Garden Centre group
- Negotiating Heads of Terms and drafting documents for a prospective long-term lease allowing for a variety of uses after redevelopment of the Centre, with lease-back of part
- Advice on corporate refinancing package
Home Counties based Garden Centre group
- Granting medium-term leases with break options to specialist traders including aquatics and pets
- Settling a compromise agreement terminating employment of Senior Manager
- Advice on franchise agreements
- Advising on interpretation of product restrictions in a Planning Agreement
Leisure Group of Companies including three garden centres
- Setting up standard leases and concession licences
- Advising on planning issues
- Granting several short-term concession leases outside Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
Hampshire owner/occupied garden centre
- Advice on security of tenure implications of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
- Renewal of a swimming pools concession lease
- Advising on a concession agreement prepared by a retail conservatory chain
