My client has three properties valued at about £700,000 each. He has recently had a daughter and would like to gift one to her. There would be significant capital gains tax implications. Can he use the benefit of a trust and defer some of these liabilities?

If your client would set up a trust of which his daughter would be a beneficiary, this would be deemed to be a settlor interested trust, and gift holdover relief (which would defer the capital gains tax) would not be available when putting the property into the trust. The best suggestion I can offer, although not really satisfactory, is to gift the daughter a very small percentage of the property each year, so that the capital gain on that small percentage is less than the annual exemption (currently £11,100). This means recalculating the market value of the property again each tax year, and the consequent potential capital gain, and make a new gift each year accordingly.