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Martello Welcomes Chris Taylor as Product Director - Environmental Searches

April 20, 20233 min read

Martello is excited to announce that Chris Taylor has joined the company as Product Director.

We are pleased to announce that Chris Taylor has joined Martello as Product Director of Environmental Searches. Chris’ career to date includes co-founding Groundsure and Argyll Environmental Limited, leading environmental and commercial teams at Future Climate Info and Landmark as well as creating novel datasets and reports for GeoSmart. He also worked on the UK’s first residential environmental report some 30 years ago.

As an environmental expert, Chris is one of fewer than 200 Specialists in Land Condition (SiLC) and having previously worked as a database and GIS engineer, he is one few people able to blend consulting with automation.

Chris joined Martello as a consultant in February, and his contribution has been invaluable in developing a new on-demand, digital, environment report in the sector from the country's only independent environment search provider. Chris has slotted into the team effortlessly, and his environmental expertise gives Martello the edge in delivering digital data instantly, accurately and as an expert for our clients (conveyancers).

Martello are on a mission to make conveyancing searches instant and have many validation points to evidence that the mission is underway, since our most recent fundraise earlier this year – which included business angels from five of the top 150 conveyancing firms, and one of the UK’s most prevalent venture capitalists, Fuel Ventures – the team has doubled in size, as have our letters of intent from conveyancers. Martello plans to release our first search, the “Martello Environment Search”, in just 6 weeks.

Commenting on his new role, Chris said, "I am thrilled to be joining the team at Martello. The company has a wonderful vision, a competent team, and strong leadership. For me, now is the time to get involved, it’s the new and innovative companies where I can add most value, it’s also these companies who I believe can add most value to the industry". When asked for his opinion, Co-founder and CEO of Martello, Dr Henry Crosby Ph.D., said “We are ecstatic to have Chris as part of our team. Chris’ expertise, ideas, and level head makes him a 1 in a billion hire, and he will be the driver that we need to innovate with accuracy in the conveyancing searches space.”

As the conveyancing industry continues to evolve, Martello’s commitment to providing instant search packs and making data accessible to all parties involved will undoubtedly help conveyancers stay competitive whilst providing exceptional service to our clients.

About Martello

It takes less than an hour to buy shares on the stock market. But it takes 5 and a half months to buy a home, from offer to completion.

Transactions are completed by property (“conveyancing”) lawyers who are expected to collect a huge amount of data to evidence their duty of care for their clients, and their client’s lenders.

This would be okay if the data that underpins the home buying market wasn’t such a mess. The most painful example of this is the (sometimes) 12 week wait for “searches”, which is a baffling 100+ page suite of PDFs commissioned by the buyer’s lawyer, to tell the home buyer everything that they really need to, but don’t want to know about their potential home, such as underlying radioactive gases, Flood Risk, Adopted Roads, and subsidence.

Martello solves this problem by processing “search” data everywhere, all the time, to maintain the first live property constraints database for home buying. Their platform will automatically collect 10,000+ datasets across 700 data sources and process it against all 30 million properties in England and Wales instantly.