BL restructures development team

British Land has restructured its development team with two new key appointments.

The shake-up reflects the company’s growing commitment to this area of its business over the next few years.

Nigel Webb, head of development, becomes responsible for all group development, and will report to Chris Grigg, chief executive officer. Richard Wise becomes head of retail development, joining from Centros, the privately owned retail developer where he has been chief executive officer since mid- 2007.

Charles Maudsley, head of retail, said Wise had a wealth of retail property experience developing assets across all retail sectors, both in town and out of town where he had sourced, obtained planning and delivered large high profile schemes.

“At a time when high quality retail space is limited, Richard’s appointment further strengthens our retail expertise as we look to capitalise from our existing portfolio and expand our development pipeline,” he said.

British Land has invested a substantial amount of capital in what is currently London’s largest committed office development programme over the past year. This comprises six separate sites which will deliver 2.2m sq ft of high quality space in the City and West End by 2014.