Trowers & Hamlins

London Borough of Tower Hamlets advised on £400m Building Schools for the Future project

London Borough of Newham advised on close of £150m PFI housing project

Trowers & Hamlins, the City law firm, has advised on the completion of two major public sector deals within the space of a few weeks.

Trowers & Hamlins advised the London Borough of Tower Hamlets on its signing of a Strategic Partnership Agreement for its £400m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Project which will see the modernisation of every secondary school in the borough.

Trowers & Hamlins also advised the London Borough of Newham on its signing of a £150m PFI housing project in the council’s Forest Gate district which will see some 1,350 homes, including a mixture of estate and street properties, refurbished and managed.

Comments Helen Randall, Partner, who led the Trowers & Hamlins team on the Tower Hamlets deal: “We are delighted to have advised on these two important projects, which demonstrate Trowers & Hamlins’ strength in public sector work.”

Tower Hamlets £400m BSF project

Trowers & Hamlins advised Tower Hamlets on all aspects of its Strategic Partnership Agreement with BPEC (Tower Hamlets) Ltd, a consortium of builders, IT and facilities providers which will carry out the borough’s BSF project. BPEC (Tower Hamlets) Ltd is made up of Bouygues (UK), Ecovert and Ramesys.

Helen Randall: “We are proud that Tower Hamlets chose us to advise them on a partnership that will see the biggest ever investment in the borough’s schools.”

Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is a project launched by the Government with an aim to modernise all secondary schools in England by 2015, by rebuilding or refurbishing them and improving their ICT infrastructure.

The Tower Hamlets BSF will result in the rebuilding or refurbishment of all of the borough’s secondary schools with a further 23 schools also benefiting from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investment.  The scheme has also been extended to benefit the wider local community, by providing non-student members of the community with access to sports and ICT facilities once the new learning centres are completed.

Trowers & Hamlins is a member of the Partnerships for Schools legal services panel and is advising a number of local authority clients including Southwark Council, the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, Essex County Council, Blackpool Council and Wolverhampton City Council on their Building Schools for the Future and Academies initiatives

Partner Helen Randall led the Trowers & Hamlins team assisted by solicitor Amardeep Gill, Assad Maqbool and Nia Stewart.

Newham £150m PFI housing project

The project will see some 1,350 homes, including a mixture of estate and street properties, refurbished and managed by the council’s partner Swan Housing Association Limited.  Funding is being provided by The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Paul McDermott, Partner, who led the Trowers & Hamlins team on the Newham deal, said: “We are delighted to have helped the London Borough of Newham close this project in what is a challenging fund-raising environment for public-private deals.  The deal combined our strengths as advisers on PFI and housing regeneration projects.”

For Trowers & Hamlins, partner Paul McDermott was assisted by solicitor Victoria Early.

Other advisers to the deal include:
Navigant Consulting acted as the council’s financial adviser
TLT Solicitors acted for Swan Housing Association Limited
Addleshaw Goddard acted for The Royal Bank of Scotland