THE only firm of solicitors with offices in all principal Huntingdonshire market towns is set to move to new offices next year in St Ives – where the firm nearly started 170 years ago. For four generations of the Day family, the firm that is now Leeds Day

THE only firm of solicitors with offices in all principal Huntingdonshire market towns is set to move to new offices next year in St Ives - where the firm nearly started 170 years ago.

For four generations of the Day family, the firm that is now Leeds Day has operated from offices in The Broadway - starting almost a decade before the railway came to the town in the late 1840s. Now, nearly 40 years after the railway link to Cambridge closed to passenger traffic and half a century after the line to Huntingdon carried its last passengers, it is safe for the lawyers to move to Station Road!

Leeds Day's St Ives office specialises in wills, probate and estate planning, together with property work, and also has its employment team based there.

Resident partner Andrew Roberts, a specialist in employment and commercial property law who has been with the firm for more than 30 years, says that the new premises will be ideal to cope with an expanding workload, as new clients feed in from villages between St Ives and Cambridge when the guided bus link opens next year.

"Although the building is Victorian, all it needs is re-decoration and new carpeting before we move next year. When the premises came onto the market, it was too good an opportunity to miss," Mr Roberts told The Hunts Post.

Nor will it be the firm's first move in recent years. Last November, its Huntingdon office moved from premises in the Market Square to bright modern accommodation at Godwin House in George Street, above the former county court, on the site of the former Windover factory where bespoke coachwork was built onto Rolls Royce chassis.

Persuading country solicitors to get excited is a tall order, but the prospect of the St Ives move seems to have achieved that.

Mr Roberts added: "It's a very attractive and accessible building with its own car parking in a location that is increasingly becoming the focus of the town. We felt very strongly that we should remain within the town of St Ives.

"It's an exciting prospect, and we are looking forward to it. It's going to be a very good move for the future development of the practice.

"Although we do not, at the moment, offer our full range of services at the St Ives office, our lawyers frequently move between offices, seeing our clients at a location that is conveneient to them for the advice they require."

Leeds Day has sponsored The Hunts Post Huntingdonshire Business Awards, now in their 11th year, for the past eight years. The firm stands behind the coveted Business Person of the Year Award. Previous winners include Martin Birrane, chairman of Lola Cars, the Rev Ron Lancaster, managing director of Kimbolton Fireworks, Graham Guy, MD of Acushnet Europe Limited, and Mike Ashmead, visionary leader of Cellbond Composites. Last year's prize went to Peter Durham of, then, TP Golf, at Hemingford Abbots.