Tributes have poured in for former Hull estate agent Malcolm Scott after he died in hospital on Saturday after a short illness.

Scott was a chartered surveyor initially working for Hull City Council before joining the Prudential in 1989 when it still operated in estate agency.

When the Pru changed direction and offloaded its estate agency division Scott found himself unemployed but not one to be deterred he set up Scott’s Chartered Surveyors in 1990 – initially from just one rented room.

As the business grew over time – they took over the commercial work of estate agents Wells Cundall in 1995 and later an office in Grimsby – so did Malcolm Scott’s own reputation in both public and private sectors.

AUDACIOUS

In 2011, just one year before his retirement from Scott’s Property LLP, he launched an audacious £100m bid to buy the Humber Bridge from the government through a proposed new social enterprise company, in exchange for the crossing’s remaining debt being wiped off.

Lawrence Brown, a partner at Scotts Property LLP, worked with Malcolm for 16 years with eight as a partner.

He told The Neg: “I remember him coming into a meeting one day and just saying: ‘I want to buy the Humber Bridge.’ We all just looked at him as if he was crazy.

“The thing was, he actually came with something that would work. His scheme made perfect sense but they were never going to simply adopt his idea so they came up with something else to present as their own which achieved the same thing by reducing the tolls to £1.50 – so he won in the end.”

ESTABLISHED

After Scotts Property he went on to pursue own interests and was already an established figure in the city’s business community having been one of the early members of the For Entrepreneurs Only group and a member of the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce.

Mr Brown told The Hull Daily Mail: “He was one of the first people to champion the idea of city centre living. A lot of people were sceptical about that at the time but he was right. He also made the connection between that and the need to have a thriving evening economy in the city centre to complement that.”