A small, senior team.

Direct experience across the full development cycle, and principals who have sat on every side of the table.

Who we are.

We are a small, senior team with direct experience across the full development cycle — from site acquisition and planning promotion to capital structuring and on-site delivery. Our principals have backgrounds spanning senior positions in local government, planning, design, development management, real estate investment and agency. That breadth means we engage credibly at every stage. Between us we have consented 285 shared living beds, hold live schemes across six London boroughs, and co-invest alongside partners including Legendre. We have sat on both sides of the table in local government and in private development and we put our own capital behind the schemes we believe in.

Nick Cuff

Planning strategy, promotion and structuring, from pre-app to consent. Sat on both sides of the committee-room table.

Nick Cuff

Managing director

Chartered planner and surveyor, with a development and public-sector planning background.

Will Grant

Acquisition, development economics and exit. Two decades of structuring the deals that make awkward sites deliverable.

Will Grant

Director

Chartered surveyor, with two decades structuring development land and investments.

Tina John

Masterplanning through delivery. Design quality, sustainability and buildability treated as the same conversation.

Tina John

Director

Architect and developer, with two decades in masterplanning and delivery.

Nick Cuff

Nick Cuff

Managing director

Chartered planner and surveyor, with a development and public-sector planning background.

Nick spent over a decade in leadership roles at housing innovator Pocket Living growing the business to a turnover of £70 million and delivering more than 2,000 homes across large and small mixed use sites. He remains a strategic advisor to Pocket Living.

He also formerly served as a Cabinet Member in LB Wandsworth where he led on planning helping to enable the initial stages of the Nine Elms regeneration and Battersea Powerstation redevelopment. He is a chartered planner, land surveyor and former Non-Executive in the London NHS.

At Urban Sketch, Nick leads the team and provides strategic advice across all projects. He is passionate about good placemaking, development and the potential of public private partnerships.
Will Grant

Will Grant

Director

Chartered surveyor, with two decades structuring development land and investments.

Will has worked in the real estate industry for 22 years as a chartered surveyor, development agent/advisory and developer.
He learnt his trade at King Sturge/JLL, and has transacted over 100 development land deals, from £2m to £400m, and most recently applied this at Pocket Living as Land Director.
He is a development specialist who is always in the detail, is extremely knowledgeable of the markets and is passionate about delivering housing of all tenues. Will is a tenacious deal maker, always seeking angles to add both financial, social and place making value into developments.  

At Urban Sketch, Will leads on financial analysis, deal origination, business planning and advisory. 
Tina John

Tina John

Director

Architect and developer, with two decades in masterplanning and delivery.

Tina has worked in architecture and development for over 20 years and specialises in masterplanning, design and delivery within a diverse range of sectors.
Her work focuses on driving design to improve peoples’ lives through the built environment, place making and innovation.
She has successfully secured planning for over 3000 homes across UK & India ranging in values from £4.5m to £150m working both in architecture practices and on client-side. She is an intuitive designer with a passion for sustainable solutions.
At Urban Sketch, Tina leads on design and its interplay with development to create vibrant and successful places for communities.

Our approach.

We back schemes we believe in, often as co-investors. Design quality and planning viability aren’t trade-offs for us — they’re the same question. We work best on projects where the conventional answer isn’t good enough: awkward sites, contested planning environments, partnerships that need structuring carefully. That’s where experience compounds.