Q&A with CLM’s Laura Wilson
Tell us a little bit about CLM and your Land Rights experience.
Connections Legal Management (CLM), established in 2014, act on behalf of statutory undertakers, connection providers and private landowners. We manage the negotiation and legal completion of easements, land acquisitions, wayleaves, and consents, associated with new electricity, gas and water connections.
On leaving school and studying law at college, I worked full time whilst ‘training on the job’ to become an Easement Officer. I then completed my Estate Management degree at The College of Estate Management and was then promoted to Senior Easement Officer.
My career took me to Savills, where I became their Capital Programme Assistant. Recognising a gap in the legal market I carved a role for myself as New Connections Manager, responsible for managing the new connections business within the utility team and working with electricity and gas connection providers to procure the legal rights. I recognised my extensive skills in negotiation and background in feasibility studies, land acquisition and lease administration to start CLM in 2014.
I am so fortunate to work with my husband, Hamish is also a CLM director. We have 2 wonderful daughters, who have also taught me so much already; largely that there is no better negotiator than a child at bedtime
The connections industry is changing rapidly. How are these changes impacting the demand for your services?
I think firstly it’s because of the urgency on projects that CLM are being brought in to are of a quite specialist nature, there is definitely a leaning towards customer focused tailored solutions. One thing we’re hearing a lot of is that the electricity industry and networks can be quite rigid and therefore having somebody likeCLM, an independent company in place to manage that for companies, they are willing and happy to pay for that additional customer service as people don’t have time to be chasing networks or to understand networks processes.
Secondly, the sites are getting bigger, so if we look at the sites, we are dealing with that are industrial and commercial based, the sites are massive and the power requirements are so much bigger than they were ten years ago; that’s largely due to the growth in overnight refrigeration units and the growth of logistic sites e.g.: you only have to look at how much Amazon has grown in the last five years. We are working with companies that are building large industrial units for super warehouses for the likes of Amazon, DPD, ALDI and Lidl, all the usual household names, and because of their power requirements the connections that are being designed by networks are going back to the major primary substations. We’re not just getting points of connection outside the sites, they are kilometres away and because of that, other consents are required. It isn’t a case of just opening road notices, its dealing with:
- Environment Agency for canal crossings
- Canals and Rivers Trust
- environment agencies for crossing dykes, brooks and streams
- Network Rail for crossing Network Rail land or operational rail
As these areas are of a specialist nature it has impacted the demand for our service because we are able to provide that dedicated resource to getting these things delivered
Your expertise and your service is very specialised, and energy scheme developers have traditionally use in-house generalists for third party consents. If demand for your services is increasing, developers must be catching on to the difference a specialist can make?
Yes, our expertise is very specialised, and developers are starting to recognise this. By having a dedicated resource in giving that specialist support, it does pay off. Gone are the times where you could get an easy electricity connection for an industrial site, so having us on board is really helping.
How does your independence – you are not an ICP or IDNO – work for your clients?
As CLM is not aligned to any one network we are able to give an industry overview taking the best practise from all the networks that they work with in order to provide a bespoke tailored solution for the end developer. We’re happy to work with the developers directly, we don’t have to just speak to the ICP which is not something that networks tend to do. We are happy to speak to solicitors and surveyors, and because we are independent, they are all happy to speak to us as well. Having our independence allows us to sit on energy boards; for instance, I am a member of the SSE stakeholders panel, I am also able to advise the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in relation to the implications of recent Net Zero-related Government policy. In turn we are then able to provide specialist advice and support to our clients relating to these matters.
If there was one piece of advice you could give to developers, what would it be?
It would be to take electricity connections seriously. Get some specialist support on board at the design stage. CLM offer route proving, which is looking at what is adopted highway, what isn’t and where are you your areas of private land. We do this for some clients at tender stage so that they’re going into a contract award knowing what the risks. They are also able to highlight the risks to their client/end developers so they are under no illusion that the supply is going to be challenging or that there may be obstacles that we need to overcome. Certainly ‘time’ and ‘route proving’ will save a lot of time moving forward.
