Meet The Morton:Pattison Team
Our major asset is our staff, delivering work through a team of professional, skilled people drawn from the conservation, construction, landscape, agriculture and tree surgery industries.
Prior to forming the Company in 2015 the two Directors developed their careers working for organisations including the Wildlife Trusts, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In these roles they developed expertise in construction, environmental education, land management, ecological monitoring, reserve and visitor centre design, captive rearing and species reintroductions.
Paul Pattison Director
Paul is a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute (CMLI) with 20 years of experience in construction, land management and landscape design for biodiversity and people.
With a BSc (hons) degree in Zoology and a Countryside Management post-graduate, Paul has spent many years working on design and delivery of projects on nature reserves, parks, visitor centres and gardens as well as behind-the-scenes conservation breeding facilities. Beginning a career in biodiversity surveying and reserve management with the Wildlife Trusts, subsequent employers have included the RSPB and WWT along with private gardens and estates, as well as undertaking independent contracting and design work. During this time he has been fortunate to work on some high profile projects including the Great Crane Project, Saving the Spoon-billed Sandpiper and a new 1,000 acre coastal reserve at WWT Steart Marshes in Somerset.
Mike Morton Director
Mike is a full Member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (MCIEEM) with 20 years of experience in landscape and ecological management.
Mike has a BSc (hons) degree in Biological Sciences. Prior to establishing Morton : Pattison he spent much of his career as a reserves manager for the Wildlife Trusts after working in environmental education in both the UK and Kenya. Along with designing and implementing habitat management programmes, ecological monitoring and site management plans Mike is a successful manager of large scale habitat restoration and capital works projects.
Jonny Fawcett Projects Officer
After completing a BSc in Ecology and Wildlife Conservation Jonny undertook a habitat management and ecological survey traineeship with Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust.
Initially joining Morton : Pattison as an Ecological Contracting Operative he is now our Projects Officer, involved in design, permitting, project admin and project management across the broad spectrum of our work, as well as remaining involved in leading practical work delivery on-site. He is an Affiliate member of the Landscape Institute, working towards Chartership.
Chris Judd Site supervisor & Projects Officer
Chris is an experienced and skilled construction Site Supervisor with approaching 10 years’ experience in a very wide array of construction disciplines.
Initially studying business and then training as a boat builder, his carpentry and other transferrable skills have been applied to steel structures, pontoons, festival set builds, highways infrastructure, decks, fencing and countless other works.
Matt Batten-Harris Site Supervisor & Communications Officer
Matt’s background is in hands-on estate and countryside management, developing his conservation skills in ranger roles on country parks and other sites.
Combining his practical knowledge, passion for wildlife and public engagement skills, he has an additional role as our Communications Officer – often the face of Morton : Pattison on our social media.
Jamie Beacham Site Supervisor
Jamie is a qualified tree surgeon and has been working with Morton : Pattison for many years now, having started with us during the winter seasons on large-scale habitat management.
Now a Site Supervisor, Jamie brings his tree surgery and wider landscape experience to bear on our countryside projects.
The site team Machinery & Site Operatives
Our team of machinery and site operatives are highly skilled, bringing a range of experience from various industries to our projects.
With backgrounds ranging from tree surgery and piling rig operations to ecology and forestry, our site teams ensure that we get the work done on the ground.
Client testimonial
“It is a great pleasure working with Paul and his team at Morton : Pattison, they provide a unique service bringing both ecological expertise and practical delivery to our ecological projects. They have done several LEMP remedial and planting projects on our solar farms which has enhanced the ecological value of the sites. Their team have excellent communication skills and are organised, always providing a clear schedule. They are able to follow the rigorous safety protocols involved with working on an operational power plant. Following the works they provide reports and photos in a timely fashion. They diligently deliver planting maintenance programmes ensuring the success of works carried out. We hope to continue working with them on many more projects”
- Hertha Wood, Land Management Co-ordinator, RES
Our story
Directors Mike Morton and Paul Pattison first discussed the idea of establishing the company while studying biology and zoology respectively at Southampton University in 2001. Meeting for the first time in a Spanish sandstorm on an ecology field trip, their shared enthusiasm for the natural world became apparent over the next few years as they then graduated and worked in various roles before starting wildlife traineeships with Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust in 2006.
In 2014 Paul qualified as a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute...
...while working as a project manager and designer for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. This was the catalyst to establish his own freelance design and contracting business. Shortly afterwards Mike left his role of several years working as a Reserves Manager for Hampshire Wildlife Trust, and in February 2015 Morton : Pattison was incorporated.
In 2015 Mike was accepted as a full Member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management...
...and we initially worked on small contracts for winter habitat management and spring reserve infrastructure works. In the summer of 2015 we took on our first employee to help with our first ‘large’ project building paths, boardwalk, kissing gates and riverbank stabilisation for the Deadwater Valley Trust in Bordon. We continue to regularly work for the Trust today as they too have grown in project scale and team size.
Habitat management contracts grew in size and over the following winter we took on more seasonal employees and scaled back during the summer, a pattern that continued for a couple of years before filling our summer workbook. In particular this was aided by steadily expanding our renewable energy sector work, fulfilling ecological planning conditions on a number of solar farms that were completed in 2015 before UK feed-in tariffs became less favourable.
Design and consultancy services expanded hand-in-hand with this renewables work...
...as we made improvements to some of the landscape and ecology management plans we had been provided with, tailoring work to better suit the individual sites, reduce client costs and improve biodiversity outcomes. Throughout this period we began to win a greater diversity of professional services work, with projects including surveying, flagship nature reserve master planning, natural flood management schemes, designing outdoor school learning environments and numerous design and build works.
The array of experience and capabilities we had developed over the preceding years, combined with a steady small team of staff, allowed us to win appointment to various county council frameworks, enabling us to level up and start to deliver a greater volume of work.
The previous few years had seen a few visitor centre landscape projects...
...but our first significant visitor centre design and build project was won in 2019 and delivered on site at WWT Arundel wetlands centre under challenging conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The subsequent years have been marked by a substantial increase in scale and complexity of projects, in particular as they began to incorporate engineering works such as large scale bridges, groundworks and piling with associated increases to staffing, equipment and vehicles.
We are currently up to a team of a dozen staff and moving into our fourth, much larger premises, which will provide us with the space that we need to grow over the next few years as we continue to scale up the business and invest in our equipment, team and accreditations.