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Real Estate & Planning Disputes

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As a developer, landlord, contractor or occupier, when a real estate project or transaction becomes contentious, it is essential that matters be dealt with as quickly and calmly as possible to ensure there is minimal disruption to your business and that you maintain the value of your asset.

That is why you need legal advice from a disputes team that understands the issues peculiar to the real estate sector.

The CMS real estate disputes team is one of the largest specialist teams in the UK. Servicing clients from five locations in London, Bristol, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, the team focuses exclusively on real estate issues. Working as an embedded part of the wider real estate group, the team gives clients the benefit of experience of acting for the full spectrum of property holders across the widest range of disputes.

Our case went to court and we won. An outstanding result for our fund and for the industry at large, CMS did an exceptional job.

Global investment firm

Our clients include landlords, tenants, infrastructure providers, corporate occupiers, institutional funds and insolvency practitioners, and the team has expertise in mixed-use and residential property issues, as well as commercial property: from real estate-related insolvency to leasehold enfranchisement.

Whatever the complexity or type of dispute, our starting point is always to listen to you. Our approach and solutions are designed around your priorities: preserving the value of your investments and relationships, minimising costs, and achieving a speedy resolution. We are particularly committed to helping you keep control of your costs, providing upfront fee estimates and, in certain cases, undertaking fixed fee work.

As a team, heading to the court room is not our aim. Litigation should be a last resort. We pride ourselves on achieving commercial solutions for our clients, whether that is by mediation, arbitration or litigation. 

10/11/2023
Driving sustainability in real estate and construction
Contributing to the fight against climate change and creating social value are now priorities for the real estate and construction sectors.   The long-term nature of the built environment means that resilience and sustainability should be considered at every stage if buildings are to be environmentally and socially responsible. This brings both opportunities and challenges for the businesses that create, own or maintain it. They must consider the evolving technical, regulatory and market landscape, to ensure that their investments are future-proofed commercially, as well as environmentally and socially. This section of Bandwidth looks at some of the ESG issues that confront developers and property owners, and how they can incorporate practical solutions into their businesses.
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13/12/2023
MEES - are the regulations working?
MEES is a flagship policy to help the UK meet its net zero targets. MEES returns over 50million hits on Google, so it is undoubtedly a widely discussed piece of legislation that should play a major role in reducing the carbon footprint of the non-domestic property stock in the UK. But is there sufficient bite to these regulations? 
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Law-Now: Real Estate & Planning Disputes
Visit Law-Now for legal know-how and commentary

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07/11/2024
Key real estate issues to consider with data centres
The aim of this session is to provide an overview of datacentres and how they operate in a real estate context, but also to go more in depth into a couple of sticky points, such as the meaning of reliability in the datacentre context and to then provide individuals with ample opportunity to ask any questions they may have.
Event Webinar
15/10/2024
Impact of changes to registration of overseas entities and other Companies...
This programme of webinars provides a short and incisive review of some key topics relating to real estate, planning and construction in the United Kingdom.  
Event Webinar
04/09/2024
What’s new with the Electronic Communications Code?
This programme of webinars provides a short and incisive review of some key topics relating to real estate, planning and construction in the United Kingdom.  
Event Webinar
16/05/2024
Biodiversity Net Gain
This programme of webinars provides a short and incisive review of some key topics relating to real estate, planning and construction in the United Kingdom.  
Event Webinar
24/04/2024
The Building Safety Act 2022 and Student Accommodation
This programme of webinars provides a short and incisive review of some key topics relating to real estate, planning and construction in the United Kingdom.  
Event Webinar
20/02/2024
MEES - why are local authorities failing to enforce?
The UK government has a continued drive and commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Yet as highlighted in the first of this series of publications, “MEES – are the regulations working?” the risk of MEES enforcement is low. Against a hotly discussed political backdrop, why is it that local authorities are continually failing to enforce the MEES regulations? Left alone, the existing approach serves to undermine the UK’s net zero strategy.
Publication
Green lease drafting and the Better Building Partnership’s new green leases...
This talk will provide a general introduction to green lease drafting and consider the new green leases toolkit from the Better Buildings Partnership to be launched in early 2024
Event Legal
28/06/2023
Tomorrow
Taking the long view Even in challenging times, real estate investors continue to have a strong degree of confidence in the future of the sector.
Publication
14/06/2023
Sustainable offices and EPC requirements
Investors may be moving towards the view that making offices sustainable does not necessarily equate to higher costs for occupiers.
Publication
14/06/2023
London
The majority of UK real estate professionals continue to believe that London is overvalued. As our chart shows, this is very much business as usual. Over the past eight years, only 2021 - when investors began to wonder what a post-covid market might look like - has challenged the status quo. Even then, what we saw was only a significant narrowing of the gap, not a reversal. In this year’s polling, 62% of our respondents feel London is overvalued, as opposed to 6% who believe it is undervalued. These are the most bearish numbers we have seen since pre‑Brexit days.
Publication
14/06/2023
Infographic
  
Publication
14/06/2023
The view from the UK
Every year we ask a cross-section of leading UK real estate professionals for their views on the market. This year we polled 270 experts, including 62 investors and 54 developers. In many ways they share the outlook of the global investors we surveyed, with long-term confidence tempered by short-term concerns. Overall, 38% reported feeling optimistic about the market, while 34% describe themselves as neutral and 28% are pessimistic. Although positive, this take on the market is unsurprisingly more cautious than the one we found 12 months ago, with sentiment falling back to levels last seen at the beginning of the pandemic as the more bullish outlook of the past two years recedes.
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