Crispin Carpenter

Overview

I’m a Managing Associate in our Transactional Real Estate team.

I have extensive experience in all aspects of commercial real estate transactions including commercial landlord and tenant, investment, and asset management, sales and acquisitions, acting for end users on commercial property developments and acting on secured lending transactions for lenders and borrowers.

I have two main areas of focus within the Energy and Natural Capital sectors.

In the Energy sector, I act for developers, operators, landowners, sellers, buyers, funders and investors in relation to proposed developments, operational sites and SPVs for the projects.

In particular, I have extensive experience in undertaking detailed property due diligence and negotiating and completing option agreements for the grant of project leases and third party easements for ground-mounted and battery storage schemes (and anaerobic digestion and gas peaker schemes when they were more prevalent in the market), both for developers and landowners.

I also support our corporate/commercial team on the real estate aspects of the sales and purchases of the shares in project SPVs.

In the Natural Capital sector, I lead a team and act on a large number of transactions to secure agricultural land for a national leader in creating and managing habitat banks for the generation and sale of Biodiversity Units.

I trained, qualified and spent two years in an international City firm before joining Michelmores in 2003 for the quality of the work and its people-focused culture, which I am proud to be a part of.

Outside of work, I enjoy rock-climbing, road cycling and watching rugby.

Recent experience

Energy

Acting for a developer in negotiating and securing a number of lease option agreements, easement option agreements, leases, substation leases, easements and wayleaves for proposed developments (including acting on all the real estate aspects of one project from heads of terms right to the grant of the project lease and project commissioning). Some of the sites had complex titles and title issues requiring successful resolution, mitigation or indemnity insurance to protect the developer and facilitate project funding

Acting for a developer in negotiating and securing easement option agreements from a number of landowners along the proposed grid connection route in relation to a large, proposed battery storage development. The landowners’ titles comprise both registered and unregistered land and some of the titles are complex and affected by third party rights to win/work mines and minerals

Acting for connected landowners on the negotiation and grant of lease option agreements for a very large ground-mounted solar scheme comprising four separate parcels of land across twenty Land Registry titles. Parts of the site are affected by three existing Agricultural Holdings Act tenancies and a long Farm Business Tenancy requiring collaboration with our Agricultural team and an agreed strategy and contractual framework to ensure vacant possession on the lease completion date. This large scheme will be a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) requiring authorisation through a Development Consent Order rather than planning permission

Acting for a purchaser on the property aspects of the share acquisition of the SPVs of a portfolio of operational and ready to build projects

Natural Capital

Acting for a Natural Capital client in undertaking the detailed real estate due diligence and reporting as part of its securing of a large number of proposed new long leasehold and freehold habitat sites around the country for the creation and open market sale of Biodiversity Units to third party developers

Commercial landlord and tenant

Acting for a large investor-landlord on the grant of a large number of leases and renewal leases of premises at various multi-let buildings and sites across the South West, together with all related estate management work (including re-gearing) and the real estate aspects of refinancing the sites (including certificates of title for lenders)