So, just to keep you up to date on all that is happening right now in 2024. 

What an amazing year we had throughout 2023, probably our busiest ever year!  As some of you may or may not know, this company has now completed 25 years of trading.  I think that is some achievement.  I was also 63 years old this May and have been in the service industry for most of my working life.  On reflection, the clue is in the title 'SERVICE'! 

I have been serving peoples needs / wants /demands for a very long time now and as an engineer, much of that time is spent crawling around on hard floors and squeezing into seemingly impossible spaces.  Contortionist seems a more appropriate title!

In 2023, I decided to 'future proof' my working life by taking an NVQ and became a qualified assessor.  In short, when I finally get too creaky to crawl around fixing things, I can change my focus to checking and verifying newer engineers competencies, (in a more upright position).  I might even get to take a lunch break!

In January 2024, prices inevitably had to go up just to keep pace with inflation.  We held off for 2-years before doing this, because we do appreciate the 'knock-on' effect to our end-users.  But we still had our own costs to cover and with even more gas-exam renewals in January, combined with a slow-down in work, price-increases were a necessity not  a luxury.  Much as many spare-parts suppliers had been forced to increase their prices many, many times over the last two years.  Some increases were inevitable and some were accredited to more difficult trading arrangements with Europe, but WE did try to hold off for longer than was commercially sensible!   

This year there has seen a marked downturn in the repair & maintenance side of the business - and this appears to be common with many other engineers across the country right now.  Generally, after the Christmas break, up to Valentines day, it is normally a quiet time.  But caterers have continued to reduce their expenditure, even into the new tax year.  It is an unnerving time with a real possibility that the competition for available work becomes focused on cost.  Whenever this happens in business, quality always suffers - it's a fact of life. 

As a company that follows the 'quality' route rather than working for less and less, year on year, we will undoubtedly continue to be affected, but we will continue to be there for you, doing what we do, as long as we possibly can. 

Thank you for reading this and all I can say is "Watch this space".