10 Years with John Clegg by Mike Tustin

As we all know, time moves forward very swiftly.  It feels like only yesterday that I arrived fresh-faced and ready for a new challenge at the door of John Clegg and Co’s Thame office.  I was the final person to join the firm to work with the two John Cleggs. John A Clegg (Senior) who founded the firm in 1967 and his son, John E Clegg who I have worked closely with ever since.

After joining in 2010, I helped develop the business and was invited into the Partnership a few years later and continued to work in the business after it’s subsequent sale to Strutt and Parker and merger into the French bank, BNP Paribas.  

In early 2020, John and I joined forces again to start up Tustins, focussed on providing a specialised, customer centric woodland agency and forestry consultancy business.   We are thrilled to be working so closely together again, regaining the agile, fun culture that we love, helping clients with their investment goals.

Whilst raising a socially distanced glass of fizz, we started pondering what we had achieved as a team.  It turns out that in our first decade working together, we have purchased or sold around 800 woodlands, driven 140,000 miles, become RICS Registered Valuers, watched forestry and timber values increase at a steady pace, confronted new diseases like Phytopthora and Chalara, seen further devolution with its positive and negative effects on the Forestry sector and more importantly than ever had a lot of fun working together along the way.

What is going to happen in the next ten years?  Hopefully, we shall see substantial new woodland creation and a growing awareness of the value of timber and the role it plays. We will certainly be working hard to ensure that the true value of the forestry sector to the British economy is recognised and that the social benefits woodland brings can be extended to all parts of the UK.