Company History – profile of Ian Nurden
My Dad started in the building industry working for a company in Tetbury in Gloucestershire before setting up on his own after the war.
After I completed my apprenticeship, I had gained invaluable experience to establish myself with a labourer and spent the following years stripping, re-laying and repairing stone tile roofs until I set up my own business in February 1988.
I finished working with my father on the Friday and started up my own business on the Monday – for the first week, I only had three days’ work but things soon changed and from the following week, I had enough jobs to work seven days a week and this trend continued for a number of years.
In July 1988, I secured my first big contract to build a bungalow at Bullocks Horn in Charlton, Wiltshire. I employed a small number of other sub-contractors to assist me with the plastering, wiring and general building and by the end of this build, I had taken on three members of staff to help me run my business.
The company slowly grew over time until we were employing in the region of 30 staff; the majority of these were sub-contractors.
A sister company to Ian Nurden Ltd, Autumn Developments, was set up in 2000 to purchase land and build houses for re-sale. The first project was a cottage in Christian Malford in Wiltshire where we obtained planning permission to demolish and re-build two four-bedroom properties; these were built and sold within the first fifteen months.
Growing demand for our building services has expanded our company to a larger concern than we had anticipated and we found we were losing the personal touch that we had always aimed to offer our clients and so we decided to reduce the size of the company so that we could again always give a personal service.
Ian Nurden Ltd is also listed as an approved building services company with a number of local authorities.