Tom Bloxham MBE heads speaker line-up for first LendInvest Property Development Academy course

London, 11 November 2016 – LendInvest, the UK’s leading online mortgage lender, has announced the speaker line-up for the inaugural Property Development Academy course.

Tom Bloxham MBE will be the after dinner speaker for day one of the two-day course. Bloxham is the founder of property development firm Urban Splash and was awarded the MBE for services to architecture and urban regeneration in 1999.

• The other speakers at the first LendInvest Property Development Academy course are:
• Kirsty Barnes, partner & head of banking and finance, Gowling WLG
• Nitin Boodhun, associate, financial institutions, Arcadis
• Ed Hall, director, Gowling WLG
• Chris Lloyd, owner and director, AZ Urban Studio
• Amit Malhotra, co-founder, InvestAms Property Developers
• Pat McAllister, professor of real estate, Henley Business School, University of Reading
• Andrew Purdon, director, CBRE
• Mark Stevens, director & chartered quantity surveyor, Gleeds

In addition, the Home Builders Federation and the British Property Federation will be in attendance.

The first LendInvest Property Development Academy will be held on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 November in central London. The course is designed to help would-be developers build the skills they need to make a success of their projects, covering subjects such as how to find and evaluate sites, applying for the right planning permissions, and how to structure your team.

Enormous interest in the Academy – the first course was eight times oversubscribed – has resulted in a second course being confirmed for London, to be held on 20 and 21 January to accommodate some of the applicants who couldn’t be included. LendInvest will announce further course dates in London and other UK cities in early 2017.

Steve Larkin, Director of Development Finance at LendInvest, said: “The line-up of speakers at the inaugural LendInvest Property Development Academy course is absolutely first rate, offering a vast amount of expertise and experience of property development to our delegates.

“It is hugely encouraging that we will be joined by the Home Builders Federation and British Property Federation too. Momentum is really building behind the cause of the SME housebuilder. Action is needed today to tackle the housing shortage.”