Local Family Business Celebrates 45 Years

We support social housing organisations, including local authorities, housing associations and other registered social landlords, by maintaining their homes and their community. We care about the people whose homes we visit and work hard to ensure we leave them safe, secure and warm.

Our service delivery includes:

• Responsive Repairs including a 24/7 emergency service

• Roofing repairs and maintenance

• Aids and adaptations

• Planned and capital works programmes

• Void property refurbishment

• Electrical Services

• Disrepairs and supporting residents with the issue of damp and mould

We now employ over 100 skilled operatives who complete in excess of 70,000 responsive repairs every year.

Our clients

MCP has a long-standing affiliation within the social housing sector, supporting clients across Hertfordshire, London, South East and West Midlands. Our clients include Network Homes, B3 Living, Barnet Homes and L&Q.

History

MCP was founded in 1978 by Michael (Mick) Clarke. Both his grandfather and father started their own plumbing businesses which meant Mick spent many summers learning this trade. Mick followed in their footsteps and started work in 1970 working for East Herts Council. He saw an opportunity to take his skills further to gain more work and decided to start his own business, MC Plumbing in 1978. When work increased he took on some help and eventually had an enquiry from Broxbourne Borough Council to do some work.

Mick then secured a small contract with the newly formed Riversmead Housing (now Network Homes) to provide repairs and maintenance for 3,000 local authority homes. He soon developed a reputation for delivering on his promises, being friendly, reliable, and always finishing the job well and on time, as well as being affectionately known locally as the ‘man in the blue van’.

Personal networks soon grew into professional ones, no doubt aided by his passion to support the local community through his company which regularly awarded grants and sponsorship to charities, clubs and societies.

Where we are today

Times have changed, but the company’s values have not. MCP celebrates its 45th birthday this year, and whilst the business has grown to nearly 170 staff, it remains a family business, with the founding members remaining active on the Board.

Mick, now Chairman, appointed his son Matthew as Managing Director, in 2016, following Matthew’s successful career progression within the business. Matthew had an ambitious growth plan to expand the services, so in 2021, Matt restructured the business and appointed a new Managing Director, Mark Gelder to lead on the growth plans. Mark has extensive experience within the social housing sector at operational director level.

This restructure has allowed Matt to take on an ambassadorial role as Chief Executive and help develop the business.

Investing in local people

MCP continues to invest in local people, supporting a variety of community initiatives in Hertfordshire. Examples over the last 10 years include:

• Converting waste ground into a community garden

• Supported funding for a local school football team, netball team and a speedway rider

• Funded resident’s raffle prizes during heating installation upgrade to a managed scheme in Watford

• Donated £5,000 towards refurbishment of Hertford’s Citizens Advice Bureau to save it from closing

• Provided £100 in gift vouchers after making safe a break-in where the resident’s sons’ Christmas presents were stolen (raised by our operative)

• Appointing Apprenticeships, Work Placements / Paid Trainee Placements, Work Experience / Training Programmes

• Partnering with other local organisations to promote the industry, i.e. VolkerVessels, by holding careers days for students

• Providing free trades services for vulnerable residents

Our work attracts dignitaries from across Hertfordshire

Our work within the community has gained recognition of a number of important dignitaries who have taken an interest in the work we are doing.

Among those who’ve recently visited include:

• Charles Cecil DL, Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire – Lord Charles works to improve the number and quality of apprenticeship opportunities in Hertfordshire. He visited our office to meet some of our apprentices and to hear about our apprenticeship programme and praised the work that we are doing.

• Julie Marson MP for Hertford and Stortford – Julie was keen to learn more about our work, the many community projects and charities that we are involved with and our apprenticeship programme.

• Sally Burton DL, High Sherriff of Hertfordshire who enjoyed meeting some of our team.

Investment in our staff

Investing in our future leaders and providing career development opportunities will ensure we retain the right colleagues to meet our growth aspirations. Recent economic and labour challenges have had an impact on our business and we have enhanced our employment offering to ensure we attract the best possible candidates in a challenging job market, we are seeing the benefit of this now with a more stable workforce. However, with family heritage comes a responsibility to ensure that the values of the family stay true and that succession plans are in place to ensure a lasting legacy.

Future Plans

The plans for our business over the next 3 years are ambitious and are driven by our company values that form the basis of our strategy and culture. Our primary objectives over the next 3 years are:

• Business Growth by extending brand awareness, to increase our turnover from £15.6m to £25m by 2025

• Training: Ensuring that a minimum of 1% of sales is spent on training www.mcp.community

• Harnessing technology: We will continue to invest in digital technology to provide ease of access to services for customers, improve productivity and deliver a values-based customer experience.

• Operational excellence: We empower our teams to take ownership and put the customer experience first, targeting 10% organic growth with existing customers and 100% customer retention.

Achieving these objectives will enable us to secure our name as a leading, communityfocused social housing service provider in Hertfordshire and beyond.