Vinden to open London office

BOLTON-based property consultancy The Vinden Partnership is to open an office in London.

The company employs 35 people in Bolton and 15 in its Nottingham office, but founder Peter Vinden said that the London office would open in September to serve a couple of new clients in banking and insurance sectors who wanted the firm to open in the capital.

Vinden set up his practice in 1994 after spells working for Balfour Beatty and Morgan Sindall. He said that most of the firm’s other directors are all form a construction or consultancy background.

“I was working for a company that was put into recession and the bank asked me to stay behind. Once we’d sorted that out they asked me to look at other bits.”

From there, he has developed a surveying practice which is expected to turn over just over £3m when its current financial year ends later this month.

“We’ve not had any growth for the last three years, but this year we should show slight growth of around 5-10 per cent. When you look at the economic background we’re operating in, that’s not bad at all.”

He said the firm had developed a niche in advising banks and insolvency firms on construction schemes and other property assets.

“We’ve always had a model that’s worked in times of high growth in construction and in recession,” he said.

Within the past year, he said it had worked for almost six months advising Stockport-based construction and property firm Multibuild on its Company Voluntary Arrangement and subsequent sale to Balfour Beatty in a deal worth £1.9m.

“It saved jobs, saved contracts and it saved the brand – otherwise the business would have gone down.”

In January, it also launched a new warranty scheme for commercial buildings known as Vindemnity which is run by Zurich Building Guarantee’s former northern chief, Steve Padley.

Vinden said that the cover can be applied retrospectively to buildings or schemes that are in administration – it recently provided a warranty to a £24m portfolio of medical centres – but that this is “four or five times” more expensive than if it is involved with a project from the outset.