Avon Needs Trees is inviting quotes to provide essential legal services and support to help us through the Project Development Phase of Landscape Recovery in the Lower Chew.
The scope of services cover a broad range of areas including:
- Landowner Agreements for the Implementation Phase of Landscape Recovery
- Property longevity and safeguarding outcomes
- Funder legal agreements for implementation
- Contracts for blended finance
- Governance arrangements for blended finance
- Advice on data management and GDPR compliance
- Advice on Single Legal Entity structure
- Statutory requirements for the Land Management Plan
- Legality of access arrangements
- Final review and signing the self-declaration form
This is an exciting opportunity to be part of an ambitious proposal to deliver nature recovery, food production and climate resilience outcomes across 784 hectares in the Lower Chew Valley.
Please refer to the Request For Quotation document for full details of the work needed, required experience and expertise, and submission requirements.
Timeframe
Quotes must be submitted by 5pm, 23 April 2025.
- Reviewing quotes: 24 – 29 April 2025
- Bids awarded for legal services: 30 April 2025
- Contractor starts work on legal service: ASAP and subject to contracting
We held a webinar for Legal advisors and LLPs on 15/04/25 – a Q&A transcript follows. A recording of the 40-minute webinar is available on request .
Q&A from LRP-LCV Legal Services Webinar
15th April 2025
You mentioned that Avon Needs Trees will act as the Single Legal Entity of the project through the Implementation Period. Are you considering establishing a special purpose vehicle of some kind which will act as the delivery vehicle?
Currently, no. In our application, it was clearly outlined that Avon Needs Trees, the charity, would remain the Single Legal Entity. Given that this was approved by Defra, we are looking to continue this set up into the Project Implementation Phase. However, we are interested in understanding the risks associated with this approach more fully and would welcome the thoughts of our legal partner on this.
More broadly, we require advice around how to ensure we effectively manage any potential conflicts of interest that may arise as a result of ANT CIO being the SLE of the project given that ANT is also a landowner.
Have you appointed other consultants for workstreams yet (i.e. blended finance consultant)?
We contracted an ecologist to carry out our ecological baselining and we’ve contracted out other small bits of work, e.g our Landscape Character Assessment & Landscape Heritage Impact Assessment.
We did not contract a blended finance consultant as have the required expertise required in house. For example, our Blended Finance deliverable is being led in house by our Head of Business and Development and our Natural Capital & Nature Finance Lead.
Do you have a sense yet of which private sector finance providers you will want to approach?
We want to take advantage of our project’s proximity to urban Bristol & Bath. We are therefore planning to sell BNG credits as a revenue stream.
Other than that, our Natural Capital & Nature Finance Lead has mapped out potential providers although we are at the very beginning of those conversations. This is because we need to sequence these conversations after we get a broad green light from our landowners, so that we’re in a position to know what ecosystem services we are selling.
Have you had any guidance from DEFRA as to the extent of landowner due diligence and certification that they will require for the project? For example a form of title certificate
No – this is currently unclear to us. It may be that Defra specifies its requirements within the next few months, or it may be that we require legal support on this in a way-finding capacity
To request access to the recording of the full webinar please use the Contact us button.
