Thirty-five years, one registered activity.

Having traded through several cycles

A company formed in January 1990 began trading directly into the property crash of the early nineties. That is an unpromising start and a useful education. It was followed by the long expansion, by 2008, and by everything since.

None of that is a credential on its own. What it produces is a bias: plans that only work if conditions stay favourable are not plans. Every development we underwrite has to survive the programme slipping and the market doing nothing.

How the company is set up

Deliberately small. Development management rewards continuity of judgement rather than headcount, so the professional team — architect, structural and services engineers, cost consultant, planning consultant — is appointed to suit each scheme rather than to keep an office busy.

One person carries the scheme throughout. Not because continuity sounds reassuring, but because a decision taken in month two is usually justified by a constraint that nobody wrote down, and the person who was there is the only one who still knows what it was.

Verification

Thirty-five years of accounts and returns are filed at Companies House under 02460528. A development company asks people to commit money on its judgement, so its record ought to be the first thing they look at.