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
