Q&A with Chrissie Allen, Chief Legal Officer, Enviromena

We met with Chrissie Allen and other members of the Enviromena team during a visit to Enviromena’s new Medebridge solar farm in rural Essex, the construction of which our Energy team is funding - when complete, it will provide 71MW of energy!

While we were there, we took the opportunity to find out more about Chrissie and her views on a broad range of topics, including the legal aspects of site acquisition and what it’s like working with the Energy team…

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Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Enviromena

I’m Christina Allen, Enviromena’s Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary. I look after the legal, HR and Office functions of the business and lead a legal team of three solicitors and two trainees.?

As part of my role, I support the board and CEO with the business’s legal strategy and corporate compliance. I’m involved in all Enviromena transactions, from the beginning of the journey - starting with the land elements - all the way through to the construction and financing of each project.

When acquiring a site, from a legal perspective, what sort of considerations do you need to take into account?nbsp;

Acquiring a site can more often than not be complex from a land perspective. The legal team starts early land due diligence to identify any issues that could significantly impact the ability to build or finance.

My team looks for things like the number of landowners; information in the land title register, like restrictions on what can be built on the land, or if anyone has rights over the land that could affect our development.

We also check if we need any easements for the cable route or if we need to make agreements with councils or other utilities to cross their land or equipment.

Additionally, we consider any potential consents needed from third parties, including agricultural mortgages on the land or insurance requirements because certain landowners are unknown.

Was there anything about acquiring Medebridge that was different or more challenging when compared to others?

Among the normal land challenges, Medebridge did have more complexity than your average site for a couple different reasons. Firstly, the grid element is shared with the neighbouring solar farm and the substation has already been built. We needed to ensure all the grid elements were transitioned into a shared corporate vehicle and all the assets transferred. We also had to make sure we had the relevant legal rights we needed to maintain the equipment while taking care that we had no restrictions to accessing it at any time.?

The land element was like no other. There is a compulsory purchase of land over certain parcels of land to allow the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) to be built, should it get planning.?The implications to this are two-fold:

• If the LTC is to be built it would cut off access to two parcels of our site, meaning we would need to relocate grid apparatus and other related equipment to maintain the kit once it’s built
• The cost of moving the grid element of our site could cost millions of pounds, making it a major risk for any funder. To overcome this, we used the expertise of specialist lawyers and negotiated with Highways to ensure that not only would we receive compensation to mitigate our loss as part of this motorway being built, they would also pay for the relocation of our equipment should it be required. These negotiations were long and arduous, but we did what we always do and took a positive and commercial approach to resolve it for both us and the funder

In total, Medebridge required a further 40 agreements to be put in place before we could acquire the site. We dealt with more than 15 separate parties with various legal rights over the land and were required to obtain consents from restrictions on titles which were over 20 years old.?These parties included corporate PLCs, such as Tarmac, Veolia and National Highways.?One of the companies had dissolved, making it challenging at times.?

Was there anything specifically notable you had to overcome during the transaction?

Other than what I have already covered, the main hurdles were the volume of land agreements running in tandem and a corporate power purchase agreement (PPA), which had been agreed with the University of Manchester.?

Every day that passed and we hadn’t completed on the acquisition, we lost another day of our construction timeline.?We had strict deadlines under the PPA to have the site generating by a certain date, so we had to push hard to get all of the outstanding acquisition points dealt with, which then allowed us to fully commence the financing element.?

Working with Close Brothers was great because they engaged early and really helped by working quickly so that we could achieve financial completion. We felt fully supported by Close Brothers, which ultimately made the end of the transaction a lot smoother and less stress inducing!

What’s the most satisfying part of your role?

I get real enjoyment seeing a project come together and watching it go from an empty field to a piece of energy infrastructure the country needs now more than ever.

I also love seeing the business work together and interact with various third parties to make the pipeline a reality, and it makes me proud that I am part of it and can support our business development and construction teams, when needed.?

I have always loved working in the energy industry; it’s all I’ve ever known - when you are part of a highly skilled team delivering these great infrastructure projects it really is something to sit back and be proud of.?

How do you find working with the Close Brothers’ Energy team?

I really enjoy working with Close Brothers. I like the commercial and flexible nature; nothing is too difficult, and we work as a team to make these projects happen.

While we are a customer of the bank, it’s great to know they support us and make the deal element easier because it can be difficult and frustrating to get all the pieces of the puzzle together. When you work as part of a team, it’s really not that hard and we have good fun doing it because we had a great working relationship.?

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