Vail Williams’ flourishing Guildford office welcomes talented new recruits

The growing Guildford office of commercial property consultancy Vail Williams has signed up two talented new additions and made two promotions in its Crawley and London teams.

Joining the Planning discipline are John McNally, a senior planner with more than 14 years’ experience, and Chris Fairchild, a graduate planner. Covering the south-east and London, they both bring further skills and expertise to benefit Vail Williams’ clients. Their appointments follow on from the recent recruitment of planning expert Elizabeth Burt.

John has extensive private sector experience in residential, commercial and retail having worked at CBRE for over three years and ESA Planning. He has acted at every stage of the planning process, from promoting development sites to contesting public inquiries.

He also brings in-depth knowledge of public sector planning having spent the early part of his career at the London boroughs of Hounslow and Lambeth, and more recently in the Major Applications Team of Hammersmith and Fulham.

Also joining the team is Chris Fairchild, having finished his Masters in Planning at the University of Liverpool in 2012. He brings additional capacity and energy to the Vail Williams team, plus his customer experience previously working for a building society.

James Lacey, head of planning at Vail Williams, commented: “John and Chris are bringing even more of the skills and experience that we prize at Vail Williams. Our people have the depth and variety of market expertise that truly benefits our clients.

“These appointments demonstrate Vail Williams’ commitment to understanding our clients’ business needs and providing solutions that support and address these. They join at a time when we’ve taken on a number of exciting new projects and clients, and I’m delighted to welcome them both to the team.” John said: “I am delighted to join Vail Williams during a particularly exciting period of growth in the company. I’m confident my breadth of experience will benefit both our existing and future clients across all sectors.”

James added: “’In addition to the new recruits, as part of the planning growth strategy, Jennifer Sanders has been promoted to Planner Level 2 in our London office and Rosie Sterry from graduate to Planner Level 1 in our Crawley office. They have both worked on some high profile planning projects and during the last year have shown real commitment to personal development.” Vail Williams’ planning discipline is currently working on projects across the UK for developers, corporate clients, private clients and the public sector.