A champion of sustainability and social value

At the time, Manchester Business School was number one in global rankings for its MBA and I was delighted to qualify with Distinction. I am a true believer of life-long learning and the experience certainly influenced my career particularly around understanding the importance of empowerment, leadership and the building blocks for real strategic thinking. Seeing a leadership spark and watching it grow by providing resources to allow a person or project to flourish is a real privilege.

Large multinational organisations have many layers of management, bureaucracy and politics. I learnt how to navigate my way through barriers and no matter how large or small an organisation, never be afraid to make a decision and trust your own judgement. Managing such a large property portfolio and reporting to a Plc Board had its challenges but was very insightful and rewarding.

As a Surveyor and Accountant, my career has always been in finance and property so working for Le Masurier brings those two areas neatly together. From a finance perspective we are looking at performance, covenants and returns and from a property perspective location and specification are important. Having the opportunity to work with a local family company who has championed quality and conscious island stewardship since 1835 was an easy decision. Add in the variety of the job, from dealing with multi- let industrial estates to multi-million pound development projects, then you have the basis of a fulfilling and rewarding job.

In short, an awful lot! We consider sustainability a high priority throughout all aspects of investment. Our approach includes ensuring ethical and responsible sourcing right through to the energy efficiency of appliances sourced for our developments. Our robust ESG/CSR approach holds us in good stead to ensure we do not fall in to what I call ‘the sustainability danger zone.’ The sustainability word can easily get used flippantly with not much delivery. For us, researching and learning about the many new technological solutions becoming available is vital and integrated into all of our activities informing all investment and financing decisions.

We believe it is imperative as a developer and local business that we champion the topics of sustainability and social value and proactively encourage innovation. An interesting area we are currently investigating is the replacement of aggregates in concrete. All natural assets are precious, for example, sand is swiftly becoming the new gold! If we can find sustainable alternatives that can only be a good thing. There are some very innovative developments coming forward and we feel it is our duty to talk to these industry disrupters, investigate and learn more about latest trends and share them with our supply chain to create collaborative learning through self-navigating leadership. We believe our energetic relationships and real estate can deliver state of the art developments that work smarter for both people and our planet.

We are proud Merchant Square incorporates a myriad of sustainable solutions including a grey water solution which, despite being a more costly choice, we feel a wise one as we believe it is imperative to provide homes and retail space that work not just today but for the future, that give much more than just a nod to the sustainability agenda.

Continuing on the sand theme, we recently launched the vision for our £120 million Les Sablons development (which means ‘wind blown sand’ paying homage St Helier’s rich history) providing investment to breathe life back into town. Les Sablons will see more innovation from both a social value and sustainability point of view. Focusing on building materials and how the space will be used by the community, teamed with using this state-of-the-art development as the focus for a group of local students to learn as part of the Class of Your Own DEC initiative through our partnership with Highlands College and Garenne Group, empowering and educating young people so they can design, engineer and construct an extraordinary future. https://www.classofyourown.com/

This development also gives us the opportunity to provide a vibrant landscaped courtyard garden for the public to enjoy with real tree planting and a plant species palette that will thrive in Jersey’s coastal environment. Our roof top gardens will provide bio diversity as well as green amenity space for residents.

Merchants Square has totally regenerated a major part of the north of St Helier. The new 122 bed Premier Inn opened its doors in May 2022 and the completion of the residential homes will be completed during 2022 and 2023 with half of the units sold off plan. Randalls will also be opening a new bar/restaurant which bring some vibrancy back to Bath Street. I hope that our investment will stimulate other land owners to further develop tired and run down parts of town. We have strived hard and we hope been successful to ensure Merchants Square helps rebalance our town space, making our historical and beautiful Central Market central again.

Yes, as mentioned, our town centre needs investment and regeneration. At the moment our site is populated by redundant offices and surface car parking. We want to transform this to an area that working people and families, be it local or visitors, want to visit, stay, eat, drink, work and live. Our landscaped courtyard gardens also provide safe and much more convenient public connectivity linking the Bus Station to King Street.

I think the Waterfront plans are visionary and ambitious and I genuinely hope they come to fruition. Fort Regent has been on the agenda for decades and is highly political. My personal thoughts are that the site should be sold to the private sector for delivery providing the expertise to make these iconic spaces iconic!

I am obviously going to say Merchants Square and the potential that Les Sablons has, but I feel a big nod to the creation of the Nightingale Hospital in six weeks during the pandemic was an inspiring example of a ‘can do’ culture that we have loads of on the Island.

As a family business, we prioritise first time buyers and families buying for their sons and daughters ahead of investors within all of our developments. Our priority is to provide homes for the younger generation which are affordable relative to the competition. We were overwhelmed to see young and older Islanders queuing up to secure a home at Merchant’s Square which tells us the vision for these developments is something fellow islanders are looking for to provide ‘next gen’ with quality living environments at realistic prices. I strongly advocate we should be protecting our countryside and focus on redeveloping sites in town such as redundant offices. We hope both Merchant Square and Les Sablons, in the future are seen as exemplars of this thinking.

Absolutely! However rather than entering awards to demonstrate high standards and transparency, which for us is our modus operandi, we hope our success in this area gives us an opportunity to showcase our passion and is a reflection of the tenacity and drive of the small but dynamic Le Masurier team I am so fortunate to work with.

I think it is very important to celebrate our culture of being good corporate citizens and supporting and investing in our community. We pride ourselves on our standards of practice and strength of relationships with our business partners, suppliers and local charity partners both in Jersey and further afield.

I am very proud to be a member of the IoD which is a hallmark of business professionalism. I think the institute is not afraid to ask difficult questions of government and sets high standards for business leaders in Jersey, which should be respected and encouraged. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about myself and Le Masurier