Thornton Contractors is a medium-sized family business that has specialised in working with social housing clients and is committed to the local community

Originally founded as a plumbing and heating company, brothers Gary and Mark Thornton went on to expand the business in to the building firm it is today. The company has grown steadily over the years and, though it is a medium-sized enterprise, it has earned itself the experience and capability to tender with the big players for contracts.

Thornton Contractors have recently completed the PQQ process for the Elevate East Lancashire framework and it is already a member of the GM Procure consortium. The company is no stranger to the Elevate pathfinder, however, since it is finishing off the flagship Whitefield regeneration project in Nelson, for which it saw off some stiff competition from much larger companies when originally tendering for the work. The scheme involved the restoration and refurbishment of terraced housing, complete with the construction of new extensions in the original native stone.

“It makes us feel proud that we can be recognised to deliver this scale of projects,” said Gary Thornton, director. “You need a certain size and experience to take on this kind of work and we’re at that stage so we’re ready for the next move. We’re now being recognised as a company that can deliver the goods for a quality product and finish.”

The company has worked in some specialised niches over the last 20 years, including penthouse flats in Manchester, but also in London, which is perhaps all the more remarkable given that it is based in Nelson. Along with these kinds of projects, it has also worked on luxury homes and offices but it has also built itself a core specialism of catering for the needs of social housing landlords.

Key clients include social landlords such as Housing Pendle, Six Town Housing and Twin Valley Homes. For Pendle it has engaged in a range of regeneration work, doing internal refurbishment to properties on a number of estates. And it has just recently commenced a project with Twin Valley Homes for external cladding and roofing works to blocks of flats.

Operating as a main contractor, the company’s range of skills covers refurbishments such as Decent Homes work, but also restoration and in this latter regard it is experienced at handling both modern restoration work as well as traditional buildings where there are issues over preserving local heritage. The company also carries out disabled adaptations, the installation of renewable energy systems such as solar panels, managing projects from design to completion on behalf of its clients.

The company employs tenant liaison officers to work with residents to involve them in projects and ensure they are kept fully informed. It also looks to recruit locally and works with its clients on training, for instance with Calico Housing’s apprenticeship programme, as well as maintaining its own apprentices, across all of its trades: joiners, plumbers, electricians, stone masons and so on.

Thornton Contractors takes the local connection very seriously, and this extends beyond employment to the supply chain too, with the company determined to work with businesses locally. That attitude also extends to more specialised construction related activities that it may need to procure. It’s about the local economy benefitting from local regeneration schemes, by churning the pound locally, rather than investment going to companies from outside the area.

As Gary Thornton explains, it’s also to do with local involvement too: “On the specialist side of things, we try to offer work out to local companies before we go out of town, because in this regeneration work now it seems to be under a cloud, where every town sees phone numbers they’ve never heard of on the vans for [the companies] coming in and taking a lot of work, so it’s great to see a local number for a company doing work in the area.”

With its determination to deliver quality craftsmanship, with this commitment to the community, Thornton Contractors has been able to grow itself into a position to take on contractors many times its size. And it hasn’t finished yet.