A growing national presence
John Sayers, managing director, introduces our Annual Report 2021
We are pleased to report that during the last 12 months our national footprint has continued to grow and we are winning a range of contracts outside of our traditional North East heartland that has made the business more resilient and grown its profitability.
The latter would be pleasing in any year but when one considers the challenges we faced as a result of the pandemic, and other pressures currently impacting the wider economy, the financial performance of the business has given the senior management team great confidence for the future.
Since 2016, when we opened an office in Nottingham, the spread of our operations has steadily grown. With extensive contracts across the Midlands – from clients such as Nottingham City Homes and South Holland District Council – and work increasingly emerging from London, the South East and South West, we now have a strong national reach. The quality of our work and commitment to customer service is being rewarded with our placement on a number of social housing frameworks across the UK and the further our reach goes the more we are developing relationships with new prospects that we are confident will turn into live opportunities.
While the senior team can plan and provide strategic direction, the success of our business is, as always, down to the commitment and determination of every one of our team. From the administrative department to stores and through to the frontline trades, it is our people that drive our future and our success.
During the pandemic our teams brought a level of innovation into the business that we have not seen before and which has made us more productive, efficient and, at the same time, provided us with solutions that will help us meet our commitment to carbon reduction right across the business. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
We have also benefitted from the boom taking place across the UK in the construction sector and there is currently exceptional demand from our traditional customer base in the public sector where the call for our core skills is at an all-time high. This has brought the additional challenge of being almost in a constant state of recruitment across all trades which has, in turn, reinforced the need to restart our apprenticeship programme – sadly put on hold due to the pandemic – so that we can re-embark on the development of the next generation of skilled staff.
