YORK-based building and property consultants, LHL Group, has appointed a new managing director.

Richard Hampshire, formerly finance director, succeeds John Denton, who became managing director in 2010 and is now chairman of the business, which has four offices in Yorkshire and Humber, including its head office at The Chocolate Works in York’s Bishopthorpe Road.

Richard, a fellow of the RICS and Chartered Association of Building Engineers, joined the company as a building and architectural technician when it was Lightly and Lightly, in Coney Street, York, in 1986, while training and gaining a higher certificate in building studies at York College and a Bsc in building surveying at Sheffield Hallam University.

He became a partner of Lightly and Lightly in 1998 and finance director of LHL Group in 2005 after helping broker a merger with Doncaster-based Hawley and Partners that doubled the size of the business. He has also been company secretary and director of the LHL Group’s Harrogate and Hull offices.

Richard Hampshire’s construction industry experience has covered a diverse range of projects working in the residential, agricultural, industrial, and commercial sectors. Projects he has worked on include supporting the redevelopment of Thorp Arch Estate, near Wetherby; the adaptation of the Knavesmire School to what was then York College of Law and being project manager and part of a team, led by developer Northminster Ltd, which won the top national residential award at the 2017 RICS Awards Grand Final, for the transformation of Clementhorpe Maltings, a former derelict maltings house, into homes.

Today LHL Group, which works throughout the UK for conservation groups, local authorities, property developers, farms and agribusinesses, healthcare organisations and private individuals, providing architectural design, surveying, historic buildings conservation, quantity surveying and project management, has five directors, 33 staff and a £2.25m turnover.

Richard said: “It is an honour to follow in the footsteps of people of the calibre of my predecessors. Having worked in many different roles in all the LHL Group offices, I have made contact with lots of fellow professionals and gained a valuable insight into how different aspects of the property industry operate and I will take the best of this to continue to develop LHL Group and our talented staff.”

LHL Group, which works on a wide range of commercial, residential, industrial and heritage projects throughout the north, also has offices in Hull, Harrogate and Doncaster.