18 | Aycliffe Today Business
Bringing Aycliffe Business Park Together | 19
Robert Stephenson stock control
and procurement manager.
IN SAFE
HANDS
Father and daughter team
Richard Tucker (managing
director) and Alison
Stephenson (operations
director).
Pictures by Chris Booth
Aycliffe Today editor Martin Walker meets a growing Aycliffe family firm
which is winning local and regional plaudits...
AAA Caring Caretaker does exactly what it
says on the tin – and when you get an insight
into this family firm, you can see it’s living up
to its name.
Winners of the Employer of the Year
category at Aycliffe Business Park’s Make
Your Mark awards back in February, Caring
Caretaker followed that accolade up by
winning the same award at the Northern
Business Star regional awards event in
Newcastle in April.
The company – run by father-and-daughter
team Richard Tucker and Alison Stephenson
– forms part of a group of five businesses
based at Bede House along St Cuthbert’s
Way on Aycliffe Business Park.
It was first launched as AAA Property
North East in Sedgefield in 2007 and first
relocated to Aycliffe in August 2014, at St
Cuthbert’s House.
AAA Caring Caretaker was then launched
in January 2015 and in August last year the
firm had to expand into larger offices at Bede
House.
It now has contracts with the NHS,
Poundstretcher, Flexspace and a number
of large care homes and estate agents as
well as countless private landlords which is
seeing the firm flourish.
With 10 members of staff, including three
maintenance technicians who are out on the
road, it’s the firm’s refreshing approach to
recruitment, as well as staff benefits, which
has made competition judges stand up and
notice.
“To win Employer of the Year really
personified everything we’re trying to do,”
says Richard proudly.
“Of all the awards, that one really made
the point of what we’re all about – caring for
our clients, but caring for our staff, too.
“You would expect a company like ours
to be in for those competitions, but the
Employer awards are difficult areas, so were
absolutely thrilled to win both the Aycliffe
award and the regional one.”
Richard has 25 years’ management
experience operating at middle and senior
management levels within large corporate
firms, and he’d previously spent 20 years
within the RAF Transport and Logistics
command which included spells in the
Falklands and the first Gulf War.
He then transferred his skills into
managing commercial areas of logistics
supply chains, distribution, production,
transport, warehousing and inventory for
firms including Safeway, Virgin Tie and TDG.
Richard then launched AAA Property North
East when he bought a portfolio of properties
with his third redundancy, and has quickly
developed the group of firms all based in
Aycliffe.
“I started out just maintaining my own
properties myself,” he explains.
“Then in 2009 Durham University
offered us a project to find host families for
Norwegian students.
“Alison then joined me as operations
director and we formed AAA Host Families in
2010. Since then Alison has developed that
side of the business.
“We now house more than 100 students a
year and we have contracts with Norwegian,
Danish and French governments.
“At the same time our property and
management businesses continued to
grow and there was a light bulb moment,
during a meeting with the RAF, when we
were discussing how we were going to
deal with the next tranche of people coming
out of the services, we then thought up
Caring Caretaker and looked to take on exservicemen as well as other people.
“If the right candidate is found, then we
will work around any needs they may have
to support them getting back into work. Exservicemen are already vetted CRB-checked
and they came with a work ethos and high
morale. They want to be given a chance, they
Richard Tucker receives his Aycliffe award
from Employer of the Year sponsor Lisa
Fleming of Driver Hire Darlington.
want to work and they want to please their
employers.
“We also work with other programmes,
such as Groundworks, in getting people back
into work.
“We’re passionate about giving people
a start that they might not be able to get
elsewhere.”
Alison also says they spotted an
opportunity to launch Caring Caretaker which
would benefit their clients.
“We wanted to create a one-stop-shop,
because we found a lot of landlords would
often have a lot of minor repairs,” she added.
“They’ll get an electrician to fix their lights
but he won’t look at the sink, for example,
because that’s a plumber’s job.
“We thought we’d offer a service which
offers every form of repair, we’d have
different members of staff with different
skills sets so we can send the most
appropriate person on the job.”
Caring Caretaker is now looking to take
on more staff, and hopes to recruit some
apprentices soon.
“The guys we already have are perfect,”
said Alison. “So in an ideal world we want to
clone them!
“Going down the apprentice route will
hopefully enable us to mould them into the
type of person we want.”
Alison has been the driving force behind
Caring Caretaker’s philosophy of looking after
staff.
She has mo re than 12 years’ of teaching
experience and eight years in project
management, and is trained in equality and
diversity.
She also delivers deaf awareness and
British sign language courses to a range
of businesses, giving them tips on how
to be more accessible to deaf clients and
employees – one of which has since won an
award for equality and diversity.
And they practice what they preach.
“We give people opportunities and we try
to make working life enjoyable and we adapt
the workplace to suit the needs of our staff,”
says Alison.
“We have one who has a sever nut allergy,
a serious allergy which could kill her, and she
used to be ridiculed and bullied about it in her
The Caring Caretaker team outside their offices
at Bede House on St Cuthbert’s Way.
previous employment because they didn’t
take it seriously. But we’ve made our offices
a complete nut-free zone, and that’s not up
for negotiation.
“We have two members of staff with
dyslexia, but we’ve given one of them a
dictaphone so they can read out their reports
and another member of the team will type
it up.
“We see people for who they are and
what they can offer us, rather than whatever
limitations they might have.
“We also offer training to our staff – we
have five members of the team doing NVQ
training at the moment – and we took a
young lady in from the Princes Trust scheme,
put her on an NVQ and she’s about to finish
her first qualification, which will give her a
major boost.
“We have other members of staff on
flexible working hours to suit their home
life and we work around that to suit the
business.”
As well as their Employer of the Year
awards, Caring Caretaker was also 2015
finalists in the Durham Student Landlord of
the Year and North East Property Manager of
the Year categories at the North East Student
“To win Employer
of the Year really
personified everything
we’re trying to do,”
Housing awards.
But winning the top awards recently was
just reward for a lot of hard work.
“It felt like a virtual pat on the back,” added
Alison.
“It was nice to be made to feel special
for one night, because a lot of hours, a lot
of hard work, a lot of blood, sweat and tears
goes into running the businesses here and
that special night makes it all worthwhile.
“It’s nice to hear it from someone else
outside the company.”
For more information about
AAA Caring Caretaker, go to www.
aaapropertynortheast.com or call 01325
311116.