Crown Agents (a British public corporation until 1997) is an international development company, working with clients in over 110 countries and providing direct assistance, consultancy and training for public sector modernisation, particularly in financial management, procurement and logistics.

Their residential training centre had for many years been based on the south coast at Worthing, housed in a large and rambling former hotel on the seafront. The lease was due to expire in the very near future and a decision had been made to move to more modern accommodation and to outsource the bed and breakfast accommodation requirements of the overseas delegates attending the training courses.

We were contacted to see if we could help and invited to meet the Director of Training Steve Summers and his colleague Louise Cannon. Following this meeting we submitted our proposal and were given the assignment to search for, identify and acquire suitable new offices as a matter of urgency.

• We first checked the range and scope of the search area and it emerged that Crown Agents (CA) had a strong preference for a south coastal town offering good access to their Sutton HQ and to Gatwick and Heathrow airports. They also needed a choice of hotels and B&B establishments to accommodate the 80 or so overseas delegates attending each course.
• The new facility also needed to be fully fitted out with modern technology as the centre would also be required as a disaster recovery centre.
• But the crucial requirement was to be able find, obtain approval, acquire, fully fit out and commence operations at the new training centre within 6 months – what you might call a tall order.
• To maximise our chances of finding suitable offices in time we thus embarked on a hectic programme by scouring the property market and identifying and visiting a range of potentially suitable offices around the south coast.
• Fortunately we were able to find several offices which potentially matched Crown Agents requirements and took Steve Sutton and his colleagues along to walk the floors with us.
• We identified three likely options and carried out in depth research as to their availability and suitability. This then led to a decision by Steve and his colleagues to try to acquire space in one particular building and we were instructed to negotiate terms with the existing tenant who wanted to move out.
• Over the next three to four weeks we carried on negotiations until we finally managed to agree the terms we wanted. At this point it emerged that Crown Agents were required to apply to the local Council for change of use permission on the space they wanted to occupy. We assisted them to submit their request and to make their representations following which permission was granted.