TFT has announced the opening of two new offices in Leeds and Southampton respectively. The new openings reflect TFT’s confidence in key markets following the pandemic and round off a very productive year, which saw the firm grow by 10%.
As one of the UK’s fastest growing cities, Leeds was an obvious choice for TFT to expand to with clients already spanning major leisure and entertainment developments, office, manufacturing, logistics and retail in the region. The office will be headed by Robin Holme, who joins TFT from CPC Project Services, where he headed up the firm’s building surveying division. Robin also previously led Watts Group’s Leeds office.
Meanwhile, following a successful transition to the firm working from TFT’s South East offices, David Bassett will lead TFT’s new base in Southampton, which will cover the south coast region including Southampton, Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Brighton. David has been at TFT for two years and was a Director at JLL prior to that.
The openings follow notable projects including St James Quarter in Edinburgh, as well as the newly completed Legal & General regional office portfolio, which will provide space for 30,000 civil servants across 11 cities in the UK.
Alistair Allison, Managing Partner of TFT said: “We have a strong track record in both the North East and south coast regions, which have previously been serviced from our other offices. We are now firmly committed to both regions with a physical office servicing existing and new clients.
“These moves also enable us to tap into the pool of university talent and associated labour markets in these two locations. Post-Brexit and Covid, we predict there will be a desire for more non-core office locations amongst talent as well as clients, with both Leeds and Southampton in an ideal position to attract inward movers. We have adapted excellently to the hybrid model of working and feel an expanded network with wider geographic coverage will be a real benefit to our clients.”
Leeds was named the best city in Britain for quality of life, ranking 26th out of 100 cities around the world. The region is booming with £33.9 billion invested in large scale developments in the North East during the last decade, and a further £7.3 billion under construction or in the pipeline. Indeed, the economy is forecasted to grow 21% in the next ten years.
Similarly to Leeds, Southampton is seeing a lot of healthy developments, with a particular emphasis on retail regeneration and the expansion of Southampton airport as well as the Solent Freeport designation, which will provide major opportunities for the region to grow in marine, logistics and industrial sites.
Alistair Allison continued: “The firm’s significant growth, in what has been a challenging time for the real estate industry, has helped to drive these new openings with major clients in both regions. This is firmly linked to our sustainability and decarbonisation services, which are on the rise as funds and occupiers re-assess how they create and use buildings to meet ESG targets. For this reason, we have brought our engineering and sustainability services together to bring clients a unique offer, which they can now access locally in the North East and South East regions.”
In addition to the new offices, TFT has dedicated offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Guildford, London and Manchester, offering clients specialist property services with in-depth local knowledge.
