It’s been a challenging year for most, the impact of Brexit, Post Covid challenges and the conflict in Ukraine having impacted businesses across the UK in many ways, but it’s also been a rewarding year.

There’s plenty for us to be proud of, not least the fact that we reached our financial targets for the year – which in the current economic climate is something that isn’t something we take for granted.

One area where we’ve seen excellent growth and expansion is in our delivery of public sector projects, which can be attributed to our success in being appointed to a significant number of key frameworks. This has been a key driver for expanding our service delivery in the North of England, but has also enabled us to secure a solid pipeline of works across all regions for 2023.

We went into 2022 with two goals in mind – to maintain our turnover and margins, so that we would remain financially robust, and also to retain and gain clients. But gaining new business for the sake of profit and growth isn’t what we’re about, we believe that we need to be the right fit for our clients and want to enter into every working relationship confident that we can deliver what’s needed. It’s an approach that seems to strike a chord with those we work for, as not only have a significant number of our clients been with us for many years, but we’re seeing a gratifying level of repeat business across the board. To us, that says we’re doing something right.

Of course, there have been challenges both for us and our clients this year, increased costs of materials, general uncertainty and concerns surrounding recession have all been evident. However we have worked closely with our clients to find solutions, allay concerns, and develop approaches that work for us both.

People play a huge part in this success, both the people who work for us, and those we work with and for. Building, developing and nurturing relationships has been key in what we’ve been able to do this year and we’re delighted to have not only maintained strong relationships with existing clients, but also developed new ones as we’ve welcomed several new clients on board.

Central to our success is absolutely the hard work and dedication of our teams, fundamentally the most valuable resource of our business.

We’ve got great people and we want to keep them! Right now, there’s a huge skill shortage in our sector, and we know that many of our people could have their pick of jobs elsewhere. We’re delighted to say that not only have we gained new staff, but we’ve retained most of our team. There’s no better demonstration of this than the recent event lunch we held to honour team members who’ve been with us for ten years or more. We’d like to extend our thanks not only to those who we celebrated at that event, but to everyone who’s hard work has made this year what it was.

Going forward, we’re in a good place as we enter 2023 and our goals are to build upon this year’s achievements in the new year. We know that it’s likely to be a challenging year for many, but we’re confident that we’re well-placed not just to get through but to continue to grow and diversify.

From the full team at Morris & Spottiswood, we wish you all a very Happy Christmas and all the best for the New Year.