Chief's plan to bank on the boom
The new boss of a Preston building firm has unveiled a three-year plan to cash in on the boom in social housing.
Lee McCarren, chief executive of Forrest, which has its head office in Longridge Road, Ribbleton, wants to provide a range of services from repairs and maintenance to installing micro-renewable energy generators in homes run by housing associations and councils across the country.
He said there was 1bn of work available every year in the North West alone.
The firm has already taken on 50 new workers in the past six months.
Mr McCarren said: "The market for the kind of work we offer is 1bn a year in the North West and 10bn nationally and we are doing about 50m a year at the moment, so there is a lot more available.
"Our aim is to do that by expanding the services we provide to meet all the demands our customers have.
"We want to become a one-stop shop for all they need."
He said the company had already secured 50 'framework clients', mostly councils and housing associations, from Yorkshire, the North East, the East Midlands and the South.
John Heaton, group strategic managing director at Forrest, said the government's Homes and Communities Agency had committed 4.5bn to building new homes over the next three years.
He said: "By expanding the services we provide in the manner we want to, we want to work more closely with them to help them meet whatever spending targets they are set by the Government.
"The general thinking is that this could increase the amount of people looking to outsource work to companies like ourselves and our aim is to be able to pick some of that work up."
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Weather for Preston
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 11 C to 18 C
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Sunny spells
Temperature: 14 C to 19 C
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