Surveyors join up to create major player

GSC Chartered Surveyors, a rural practice and estate agency business, and Gray’s Chartered Surveyors, which is strongly orientated towards estate and sporting management, are merging as GSC Grays.

The merger brings together around 35 staff based at offices in Barnard Castle, Hamsterley, Leyburn, Richmond, Stokesley and at the Earl of Durham’s estate office at Lambton Park, near Chester-le-Street.

The new business will offer a range of professional services including property sales and lettings, rural consultancy, estate management, sporting, renewables, valuations and surveys, as well advising on planning and development matters.

The firms were established separately by their founders David Gray, the chairman of GSC Grays, and Guy Coggrave, managing director of GSC Grays.

Mr Gray, who established Gray’s Chartered Surveyors in 2005, said: “We were at a point of being ready to take Gray’s forward and identified GSC as a company of like-minded people.

“Whilst some of our expertise overlaps, we each bring established, complementary specialisms.

“We both work in the area of renewables, for instance; however GSC does a lot of agency and valuation work, whilst Gray’s is highly respected in the management world.”

Mr Coggrave, who grew up on the family farm in North Yorkshire and established GSC in 2004, added: “The merger means our existing and future clients have access to a complete and comprehensive service.”