Meet George, Strategic Land Buyer at Persimmon Homes

I started at Persimmon as part of the 2022 cohort of graduates, my background was a degree in mechanical engineering from Swansea University.

My time on the graduate scheme has recently come to an end and I have now taken on the full-time role of Strategic Land Buyer in the Southwest office (Exeter). I found my time on the graduate scheme fascinating as I moved around each department, this was my first exposure to a major business in a sector I came into with a relative lack of experience, needless to say I had a lot to learn.

My time here exposed me to the variety and complexity of the constantly shifting landscape of the development world, and how every department has an important role to play beyond what most of us see from the outside when reading things in the news or passing local developments.

My first year I took the time to focus on learning as much as I could about the relative roles and responsibilities each department holds for progressing a site, in this time I took a particular interest in the land and planning side of the business where we focus on identifying new sites, assessing feasibility and navigating the planning system prior to deploying our site teams to begin building out a site.

Moving into my second year with Persimmon I took on a more permanent role within land and planning, I took on my own sites to progress towards receiving planning applications and more regularly participated in site visits/evaluations.

Alongside this I picked up a few major projects with Group Strategic Partnerships and Group Strategy that gave me an interesting insight into the wider business and the strategic vision for the business and what the future of Persimmon might look like.

I enjoy my role due to the variety of work I undertake here, no 2 days ever feel the same and there is always a new challenge to take on.

As I mentioned previously, I find my role highly diverse so a typical week can vary massively but the core of my role involves; 

• Navigating planning issues this may be from a design input perspective where we need to adjust the layout of a site or, potentially negotiating with the local authority around the finer details to find common ground on our plans for the site 
• Identifying future sites for the business, this could be through our own internal search where we approach landowners who we believe have developable parcels of land or, from promoters approaching us on behalf of a client who want to enter an agreement with us to develop their land
• Viability assessments where we identify all the associated cost with a site and use that to estimate the potential value we can offer to a landowner. 

The graduate scheme was a brilliant opportunity to be exposed to the industry and no matter where you end up at the end, having the exposure to all other departments and understanding what it is they do is invaluable to your personal development. Throughout the graduate scheme the support was fantastic, we were invited to numerous training courses and visits to other areas of the business e.g. Space4 (our timber frame factory) and regular check in meetings with Madi (The director responsible for the graduate scheme) was a great way to discuss how things are going and share any ideas for what you’d like to do within the graduate scheme.

If you are interested in a career with varied opportunities or if you’re looking to engage with multiple professions before settling into your career, then is a great opportunity for you.