Property for charities

Charities deal with property in a variety of ways, sometimes through relatively simple arrangements and sometimes through bespoke agreements involving complex issues of charity and trust law. Whatever your circumstances, our specialist charity property lawyers have a wealth of experience in helping you navigate these issues.

Our approach is based on a deep understanding of the sector enabling us to find practical solutions to meet your needs. We work to understand and achieve your objectives (which often involve more than a purely financial outcome) and to find the best ways to work within your constraints. We pride ourselves on offering a service which gets to the root of a problem rather than simply ticking legal boxes.

We can help you with: 

• setting your property strategy
• relations with key stakeholders (eg. funders, local authorities)
• freehold sales and purchases including sales for development involving overage and clawback, and secured lending
• leases, licences and other property management agreements
• protection and use of open or community space
• community asset transfer agreements
• unravelling trust and title issues relating to charity land and dealing with issues relating to permanent endowment, special trusts and compliance with the Charities Act, as well as dealing with first registrations and adverse possession
• grant of rights of way and other easements
• property issues arising in connection with charity mergers and incorporations. 

Our highly experienced team has deep knowledge of the sector. We are members of specialist professional networks and have close links with industry bodies such as the Ethical Property Foundation, the leading property advice service for charities.

We work closely with other members of the charities team to ensure an integrated service and full understanding of your needs. Given the breadth of our practice at Russell-Cooke we are also able to draw on expertise in other areas such as planning, property litigation, construction, education and children law.

We are accredited by the Law Society for clinical negligence recognising our expertise in this area. We are also Lexcel accredited by the Law Society for excellence in legal practice management and client care. Members of our medical negligence team are on the Law Society and AVMA clinical negligence panels and have been accredited by APIL as Clinical Negligence Specialists. We are ranked in the Legal 500 and Chambers. 

We are known for going the extra mile in securing the best possible settlements for our clients.

Charges are based on hourly rates plus administrative charges and disbursements but we’re flexible and are happy to discuss charging rates in relation to your budget for a particular piece of work. Where there is unpredictability or for the initial stages of a project, we’ll provide an estimate of your likely legal costs and will update this as your requirements or the circumstances of the work change.

For work where we can predict or clearly anticipate the work to be done, we can also act on a fixed or capped fee basis.

We’re happy to discuss your requirements free of charge and will then provide an estimate of costs.