Avison Young hires ex-Newcastle council boss

Avison Young has hired Paul Stewart, the longtime property chief at Newcastle City Council, into its Yorkshire and North East team. (greenstreetnews.com) Green Street News reported on April 22 that Stewart had been head of property at Newcastle City Council for nearly six years. The move shifts a senior public-sector property operator into one of the region’s biggest commercial real estate advisory markets. (greenstreetnews.com) Stewart’s council role sat inside a property team that manages a mixed commercial portfolio generating more than £12 million a year and carrying a capital value of about £290 million, according to a current Newcastle City Council job posting. That gives a sense of the scale of the estate he worked within before leaving for private practice. (newcastle.gov.uk) The hire lands as Newcastle is pushing ahead with large regeneration schemes. In August 2025, the council said a £121.8 million funding package had moved Forth Yards closer to development, with plans for up to 2,500 homes plus public realm and commercial space. (newcastle.gov.uk) Avison Young has been building out that regional work for months. In May 2025, the firm said it had added senior hires in Leeds and Newcastle to expand development and advisory capacity across the North East as devolution brought what it called growing opportunities. (avisonyoung.co.uk) The company has also been active on Newcastle mandates tied to regeneration. Avison Young said in 2025 that it had been appointed to help find a development partner for Forth Yards, a site it described as one of the city’s most significant long-term opportunities. (avisonyoung.com) Inside Avison Young, the regional structure has been getting more defined since 2023, when the firm named new regional managing directors across Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. That wider reshuffle set up the local leadership teams Stewart is now joining in Yorkshire and the North East. (avisonyoung.co.uk) For Newcastle, the thread is straightforward: the council’s former property lead is moving to an adviser already embedded in the city’s deal flow. For Avison Young, it adds another executive with direct experience of how Newcastle’s public assets, planning priorities and regeneration projects actually move. (greenstreetnews.com; avisonyoung.co.uk; newcastle.gov.uk)