Michael Bray

Recent Work

• Advising a brewery and hotel operators on the rollout of EVCI leases across their UK portfolios to the likes of Tesla, Fastned and Osprey, including setting up documentation and a streamlined tenant pack and approval process to reduce time and costs in individual roll out across each site.
• Advising Surrey County Council on template EVCI documentation in connection with their public procurement for an operator to run services across Surrey.
• Advising several clean energy developers (including REPD, Photovolt, Firstway Solar and Open Renewables) on the development of large-scale ground mounted solar parks and ancillary and separate battery storage projects. One particular project also includes a proposed co-located green hydrogen generation facility and an adjoining 140 point EVCI motorway superhub (and battery storage).

Recent Work

• Advising UK government client on the real estate aspects of a parent body organisation competition to acquire two nuclear site licence companies with contracts to decommission 13 of the UK’s nuclear sites, including the leasing of 11 historic nuclear sites.  This transaction has been reported to be one of the UK’s largest ever public procurement exercises with a value of around £7bn
• Advising a nuclear site licence company on the reconfiguration of an existing nuclear power station (including land and asset transfers/re-siting, and interface with nuclear site licences) to enable the construction of a new nuclear power station
• Advising a private energy company on the acquisition, construction and financing of a 27MW biomass CHP project

Recent Work

• Advising a local authority on the real estate aspects of the redevelopment and land assembly of large parts of a town centre, procured via a development partner selected through competitive dialogue, including the redevelopment of a railway station, relocation of a bus station, new NHS centre, library, circa 3,600 new homes, and new office and retail space with a total GDV of over £1bn.
• Advising a Middle Eastern bank on the land assembly and forward funded construction of a student accommodation portfolio comprising over 2,000 beds across the UK with student accommodation funds administered in the Channel Islands, and advising on the subsequent sale of the portfolio for over £270m.

Recent work

Logistics

• Advising several train operating companies and owner groups on the successful mobilisation of a number of rail franchises over the last decade, and thereafter advising the train operating company on asset and portfolio management at depots, stations and other facilities over the life of the franchise
• Advising a water utility on the complex contractual arrangements with HS2 and DfT in relation to the construction of HS2 Phase 1 whilst ensuring the resilience of the public water supply and the underlying quality of groundwater, and a framework for several hundred asset diversions and reconfiguration of land interests under threat of CPO
• Advising a train operating company on the complex reconfiguration of two major rail depots including related leasing arrangements, construction contracts and regulated change proposals.  One site also involved a complex and novel funding structure to enable private funding for the upgrade works well beyond franchise-end without the ability to designate the documentation as primary franchise assets due to a recent change in DfT policy
• Advising a private sector consortium on the real estate aspects of their bid to run a logistics commodities and services transformation contract with the Ministry of Defence, including the leasing and licensing of strategic sites
• Advising a bus operator on a variety of landlord and tenant matters across its portfolio, including leasing, licencing and acquisition & construction of bus depots