HIPs help firm ease through squeeze

AN Oldham company is bucking the credit crunch. Sarcon Surveys, which started as a one-man outfit, has now expanded to a team of eight.

Managing director Fred Linskey, from Austerlands, created the firm a year ago to provide home information packs (HIPs) and energy performance certificates (EPCs) to estate agents, landlords and the public.

Mr Linskey (42), who has a background in surveying, set up Sarcon Surveys in 2007 but received little encouragement from estate agents.

“Some were enthusiastic and asked to me to keep in touch, others were dismissive,”said Mr Linskey, who also lectures on the home inspector and domestic energy course at University Centre Oldham.

Undeterred by the lack of response, he found work from friends and colleagues and gradually built a client base.

His first employee, Phil Brown from Bury, a retired environmental health professional on a part-time basis, helped fill a gap in the local authority search area of the HIPs requirements and slowly the business began to evolve. Two more surveyors, Gerry Matley, from Grotton, and Phil Costello, from Castleton, have joined Sarcon Surveys and Fred’s wife Maxine and Pat Mellor, from Lees, have been taken on to handle growing administration workloads.

Karl Deighton, from Radcliffe, whom Mr Linskey met on the course at University Centre Oldham has been taken on as a trainee, and part-time bookkeeper Joanne Morton, from Royton, makes up the team.