5 Minutes With Stephen Hankinson Back

Date published: October 16, 2015

We recently caught up with our Group Chief Executive Stephen Hankinson and asked him to take 5 minutes talking about his plans for Whittle over the next 5 years.

“Before I talk about the future let me set the scene.  Whittle is an important part of the Hankinson Group which was established by my Father Roy Hankinson in 1975.

We actually acquired the business in 2011 from an Australian PLC Programmed Maintenance Services (PMS) who had themselves acquired the business in 2000.

It was quite a challenge taking on a business and a business model that was being run and funded by a company on the Australian Stock Market, particularly as we are a family owned business and the recession was in full swing.  However we saw the opportunity and it was also a great fit with our existing company so we seized the moment!

Let’s now fastrack to 2015 and it’s a really exciting time to be part of Whittle and we have real growth aspirations over the next 5 years.  Our overall vision is to be ‘The best provider of commercial painting refurbishment and programmed maintenance sources in the UK’

The Senior Management Team have recently been away for 2 days during which each Operational Leader agreed what being the ‘best provider’ will look like, and delivering their own plans for growth.

The plan is all being pulled together under the banner of 2020 vision which I think is going to become a common theme for a lot of company business plans over the coming years, but hopefully we got the name first!

Whittle are clear specialists in Programmed Maintenance and from a painting perspective we are industry leaders with our long term painting programmes with an even spread of cost – that’s our clear USP.

It’s now been delivered to over 500 customers since it was introduced to the UK in 2000 by PMS Australia.

Some of our exciting plans really focus on developing our Planned Maintenance model and delivering it to more customers in more sectors and more geographical areas.

That means over the next 5 years we are planning to open 5 more offices across the UK, which means we want to add 500 more new programme customers.  We are not forgetting our existing customers and want to ensure we deliver a service that makes them want to stay a Whittle customer.

I have been in the painting industry for nearly 40 years and certainly fall into the industry veteran bracket; however for all those years in the industry I think the next 5 years could deliver the biggest achievements.

I am undoubtedly blessed to have a great team that share the same vision and that’s something you cannot put a price on.  We want to grow that team over the next 5 years and we want to be an ‘Employer of Choice’ for high quality individuals.

It is great that we have remained a family business and we are now into the third generation of Hankinson with my son Jeremy Hankinson, who is an important part of the Business Development team.  My wife Elizabeth works alongside me and is also a vital part of our family based culture.

It is also really nice that we many other families within Whittle and the group, and that includes the Kershaw family, where four generations have worked with us, an incredible fact.

Finally, we also take great comfort from our relationship with BMS and the British Business Bank.  It is important that we know that we have a strong financial partner behind us who supports our growth structure and we have that with Shane Lanigan and his partners at BMS”.

You could genuinely sense the excitement and passion when Stephen was talking about the 2020 vision and the flow was only interrupted by a meeting reminder on his phone.

With that our CEO was up and away to the next meeting and was no doubt thinking about more exciting plans.