Ben Gummer
Founding Partner
Ben has previously served as Minister for the Cabinet Office, responsible for the design, implementation and coordination of all UK domestic policy, including housing policy. He was CEO of a sustainability consultancy, a Senior Adviser at McKinsey & Company, a Visiting Fellow of Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government, and board member of the Office for Place. Ben founded GummerLeathes with Tim Leathes in 2020.
Tim Leathes
Founding Partner
Tim is a recognized leader in the emerging property sector of masterdevelopment. From 2010-2020 he was Development Director at Urban & Civic and responsible for the planning and delivery of 15,000 new homes across three sites: Alconbury Weald, Wintringham and Waterbeach. Tim was previously at Lend Lease and the United Nations’ Human Settlements division (UN Habitat).
Carla Featherstone
Executive Assistant & Project Support
Carla supports our leadership and project team and manages our office. She has performed similar roles in a number of fast-paced, highly regulated environments. Her industry expertise spans construction, manufacturing (GKN Automotive), and speciality food ingredients (Tate & Lyle Ltd).
Tolu Abimbola
Project Finance Manager
Tolu is a Chartered Management Accountant who has worked in finance roles across multiple sectors including property. These include senior finance positions at Wates Construction, Keltbray and OD Group, managing the financial delivery of large-scale development projects. Prior to joining GummerLeathes , Tolu was Finance Project Lead at Sellar Design & Developments.
Alice Seller
Community
Alice was previously Head of Education Enrichment for an academy trust, where she worked with the community to enhance education for pupils outside the classroom and raise the profile of their careers education. Prior to her work in education, Alice worked in medical devices, health and fitness.
Ian Nisse
Counsel
Ian is a member of the Advisory Board at GummerLeathes. Ian was a Partner and Head of Commercial Real Estate at Macfarlanes LLP. Formerly a partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP and managing partner at Ashurst LLP, Ian has, for many years been active in advising institutions, developers, investors and major corporations on significant property transactions, with an emphasis on the structuring and financing of all forms of real estate joint ventures, partnerships, funds, development projects and investment transactions, both in the United Kingdom and cross border.
Lizzie Welch
Development
Lizzie has spent the last decade providing consultancy advice on large-scale, residential and mixed use developments, where she has acted as strategic advisor for Transport for London and The Crown Estate, providing advice on their property and strategic land portfolios. Lizzie was latterly a director at Savills.
Nick Berman
Public Infrastructure
Nick has worked on delivering the highest quality public services in a range of roles across the public and third sector, most recently in education where Nick worked for a multi-academy trust focussed on the school redevelopment and programme delivery. Nick has also worked for the Department for Education and on urban regeneration.
Paul Cutler
Head of Design
A trained architect, Paul was previously Head of Masterplanning & Design at Urban and Civic, before which he worked for Lend Lease on the Olympic Village and International Quarter. He has lived and worked in the USA for ten years as project lead on several resort masterplans and buildings. Paul is a leading expert in design coding, advising Homes England and HM Government.
Georgia Billings
Development
Georgia is a development specialist at GummerLeathes. She has experience in both real estate finance as well as private equity and development. Having spent four years in the real estate finance team at Investec Bank Plc, Georgia was most recently an associate at Meadow Partners where she covered acquisitions, development, and asset management of real estate assets in London and the South East.
Nick Bromell
Head of Engineering
Nick has over 30 years’ experience of working in the construction and development sector, latterly as Director of Development Project Management at LendLease. He has led teams delivering large-scale complex urban regeneration projects including the Elephant & Castle redevelopment, Stratford Athletes’ Village, Silvertown and – most recently – a major regeneration scheme in Tottenham.
Lawrence Bernstein
Head of Communication
Lawrence has worked in-house at some of the biggest firms in the City, and run his own brand, speech writing and communication agencies. He is a TED and keynote speaker on the power of clear, relevant communication in a noisy world.
Tom Hydes
Senior Project Manager
Tom, a Chartered Civil Engineer, ensures that infrastructure is in place to allow building to begin. He has worked for 26 years across the private and public sectors, including urban regeneration and strategic land projects from planning through to delivery.
Paul Karslake
Project Manager
Paul is responsible for delivering utilities, infrastructure, and the public realm. He has over 30 years of experience across a wide range of sectors including defence, commercial, education and residential. Over the past decade and a half, he has specialised in delivering utilities, infrastructure and award-winning public realm for large scale urban regeneration projects.
Hannah Hull
Development
Hannah spent six years at Savills providing consultancy advice and agency services on large-scale, residential-led mixed use developments. She advised on the delivery of Linmere, a development of 5,000 new homes in Bedfordshire on behalf of Lands Improvement and provided The Crown Estate with advice across their strategic land portfolio.
Marleny Taborda
Financial Controller
Marleny is an ACCA Chartered Accountant with extensive experience delivering accounting and finance support. She joined us from Deloitte UK and has also held Financial Controller and Head of Finance roles across a number of SMEs in the UK within which she has successfully streamlined financial processes, systems and automation.
Victoria Whelan
Development
Victoria began her career at BNP Paribas Real Estate, working across a broad development and planning spectrum. She has subsequently worked with clients in the private and public sectors on urban regeneration planning applications, development feasibility studies and development agency processes. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Commercial Real Estate from the University of the West of England and is MRICS qualified.
Paul Moore
Interim Finance Director
Paul brings together deep financial expertise with a strong commercial mindset. His career spanned major international organisations including Experian, Equifax and Fujitsu, before shifting his focus to supporting SMEs and start-ups. He works with businesses to build scalable financial frameworks and guide them through investment, growth and transformation.
Paul Mumford
Development Director
Paul has been delivering large scale housing sites since 2002, particularly around Cambridge. He is a chartered planner with extensive experience across private and public sectors.
At Urban&Civic he was responsible for developing a new town at Waterbeach, and preparing for the growth of Baldock. Previously Paul worked at Homes England and at Places for People as project director for the Gilston Park Estate scheme.