Meet Head of Land, Charlie Howell

Q1: What does your role as Head of Land cover day-to-day?

I focus mainly on three things:maintaining key client relationships, generating off-market opportunities, and leading acquisitions. Negotiating with landowners is a daily occurrence and we like to ensure that we are securing the right opportunities for our clients. I also oversee our team of land managers - prioritising pipeline, managing capacity, and providing commercial input on new opportunities.

Q2: When a new site lands on your desk, what are the green flags that make it a strong opportunity, and what are the red flags that would make you walk away?

It depends heavily on the client’s mandate and the sector they are operating in. Some clients have an appetite for planning risk and see that as where value can be created, whereas others are purely focused on consented, oven-ready sites they can move on immediately.

The consistent green flags for me are a strong location with proven or growing end-user demand, and an LPA that’s supportive of development with a strong planning department. If the fundamentals are right, you can usually work through complexity.

Red flags are more universal. Sites where there’s a mismatch between current market evidence and vendor pricing expectations can make it difficult to structure a deal that works for all parties. Planning risk is client-specific, but a site with no clear route to consent is always a concern, particularly if you’d struggle to create a credible planning strategy. And without stating the obvious, sites in challenging flood zones or with severe environmental constraints tend to narrow the buyer pool.

Q3: What’s your approach to turning a 'good site' into a deliverable one?

 We see a lot of “good stes” through our systems, but the real skill is turning those into something genuinely deliverable and acquirable for our clients. For me, that comes down to two things: relationships and planning.

Firstly, relationships. A site might stack up technically, but the process only works when a landowner feels confident and informed about what’s involved. Our role is to build trust, clearly explain our client’s requirements, and guide them through the due diligence and acquisition stages. By keeping them informed and managing expectations on structure, timescales and value, we reduce friction and increase certainty of delivery.

Secondly, planning. A good site isn’t deliverable until planning risk is understood. With our in-house planning team, we assess constraints early and advise on the most realistic route to consent. That allows our clients to price risk properly and pursue schemes that are achievable, not just aspirational.

Q4: Looking ahead to the next 12 months, what do you most want to change or improve about how we build and progress our land pipeline?

Over the next 12 months, I’d like to focus on improving conversion and scaling our pipeline, the market has not been the friendliest over the past three years, but we are definitely seeing more active buyers and hopefully the government might provide a helping hand.As our client list is ever growing, we are also going to have to expand the team. This will allow us to secure more sites and continue to be proactive rather than reactive. Whilst we are a tech-enabled business, we will always continue to require the knowledge and relationship skills of our team members to build on our existing landowner network, and spend more time nurturing opportunities through to completion.

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