Necta provides spark for Connaught
A YORKSHIRE electricity services company has been bought by housing maintenance giant Connaught for £7.5m.
Rotherham-based Lowe, which trades as Necta (the National Electrical Certification and Training Alliance), provides electrical inspection, testing and training services to major clients in both the private and public sectors.
Necta, which also has two training bases in Bracknell and Coventry, is the UK’s leading supplier of electrical safety services and offers fixed wiring inspection and testing, network drawings, portable appliance testing, electrical safety rules and basic electrical inspections to satisfy insurance criteria.
Necta also offers a range of electrical training courses.
Connaught said the cash acquisition of Necta, together with the purchase of Stevenage-based PCL, which Connaught acquired last year, established the group as the UK’s leading electrical compliance business.
Meanwhile Connaught, which provides a range of property related services including estate management and gas servicing to registered social landlords and local authorities throughout the UK, said it had also bought MSF for £6.5m.
For the last financial year, MSF and Lowe had revenues of around £14m with pre tax profits of £2.2m.
Crawley-based MSF is a fire compliance business which provides extinguisher and alarm servicing across the South East in both the private and public sector with more than 10,000 SME clients.
Connaught’s chairman Mark Tincknell said: “I am delighted to announce the acquisition of these two businesses, which reinforce our position as the integrated compliance partner of choice for public and private sector clients.
“The highly fragmented compliance market, valued at £5.7bn, is growing at a rapid 7% to 8% per annum as private and public sector clients seek to meet their ever increasing legislative and regulatory demands. We expect this market to be a major growth opportunity for Connaught for many years to come.”
Connaught’s other services include planned and response maintenance, recycling, waste management, estate cleaning and void management services.
