Your Shout: Philip Meade, Davis Meade

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Hospitality businesses with sizeable plots of land could maximise the money they make by changing the basis on which electricity and telecommunications equipment is allowed on their property. Many existing agreements will be on an annual basis, where the payment or "rent" is fairly nominal (typically, £40 to £50 per year). By insisting that these arrangements are made more permanent, significant lump sums can often be negotiated, while the rights granted are basically no different from the powers the utility companies have under compulsory purchase legislation. The electricity companies are usually prepared to negotiate a lump-sum payment for larger apparatus such as pylons. There are a lot of people out there who do not realise that they could be sitting on a pot of gold. One of the first claims we did was for a client who was being paid £75 per year for a pylon about 300 yards from the front of his house. We negotiated a lump sum payment of more than £20,000 instead. We have recently been targeting commercial landowners. In one case, we obtained a large five-figure sum for the owner of a racetrack and are in negotiations on behalf of several golf club owners. The difference between the annual payment and the lump sum payment is due to the fact that they are valued differently. The annual payment is a disturbance payment based on the cost of having to work around the apparatus, while the lump sum payment is based on the effect the pylon has on the value of the property, which in many cases can be extreme. To qualify, the apparatus has to be on land you own and supply properties other than yours. The electricity companies and the National Grid will usually pay lump sums only for pylons (not just poles), while BT will pay for poles and underground cables. [www.davismeade.co.uk