In this episode of The People in Housing Podcast, we chat with Carl Yale, Regional Refurbishment Director at Lovell, about the challenges and opportunities faced by property maintenance contractors in the housing sector. Carl discusses talent development, the pros and cons of using direct labour, subcontractors, and agencies, and the importance of fostering a strong company culture. He also shares valuable insights on managing supply chain challenges and expanding into new regions. Join us as we explore the future of the housing industry, with a contractor’s perspective on supply chains, reactive housing repairs, and the importance of building a strong brand.

Welcome to the People in Housing podcast. Do you want to introduce yourself? Tell us about yourself and Lovell.

Yes, of course. I'm Carl Yale, and I work for Lovell, which is part of the Morgan Sindall Group. I've been around for a long time; this is actually my second stint at Lovell. I’ve been in this role for about a decade now, overseeing the planned maintenance part of Lovell in the Midlands. As a business, I think we're close to a £4 billion turnover now, covering Morgan Sindall Construction, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Morgan Sindall Fit Out, and Property Services, along with some other consultancy businesses. Lovell is ultimately the housing brand within the group.

Nationally, I believe we’re approaching a £1 billion turnover, somewhere around £900 million, spanning across the UK, but predominantly in England, Wales, and Scotland. I think we now have around 11 regions, with smaller regional offices expanding into new areas. I cover the wider Midlands, primarily the East and West Midlands, but also have some involvement in projects extending down towards the South and into the M4 corridor.

In our Midlands business, based in our Birmingham office, we have a well-balanced operation that includes planned maintenance and new-build housing under Lovell Homes. What sets us apart is our focus on mixed tenure, where we can divide up a site, some for Lovell Homes to sell, some for an RP (Registered Provider) partner, and even build-to-rent, which is becoming increasingly significant.

We also handle planned maintenance. So, in any given year, if the housing market is booming, we can focus on sales. If the market shifts towards contracting and existing homes, we can pivot towards refurbishment. We have a lot of flexibility, working with partners like Muse within the group for city centre developments and our sister company, Property Services. Right now, there’s an exciting opportunity in Birmingham, where we’re involved in a true joint venture (JV) that includes both planned and responsive maintenance, putting us in a strong position to cover almost everything.

I know there's currently a big focus on Lovell Renew. Can you tell us more about that? It seems like an exciting development.

Carl Yale: Yes, exciting is definitely one word for it! Lovell Refurb never really had a distinct name, it was always just "Lovell," and our reputation was largely built around new-build projects. Lovell Homes and Lovell New Build were immediately recognisable, but we’ve actually been doing refurbishment work for over 20 years, and doing it well. It’s been quite understated, almost a bit of a secret at times.

We realised we needed to raise awareness, so the plan was to establish a name that differentiates our different divisions—Lovell Homes, Lovell Later Living, Lovell Partnerships, and now Lovell Refurb. After some discussion, we landed on "Renew" because it does exactly what it says, it focuses on existing homes, including retrofit, high-rise refurbishments, and planned maintenance. Lovell Renew is now an official brand, and we’re launching a new website in February or March, which should create more visibility. It’s the same business, same expertise, just with a clearer identity that gives us all a bit of a boost.

How do you think this rebranding will help you expand and take on more work across the country?

Hopefully, it will help because Lovell is already a strong brand, but the refurbishment side has sometimes felt like a well-kept secret. When we speak to potential new clients, especially in the East Midlands, they often say, "I didn’t know you did refurb!" And we have to tell them—yes, we do, and we’re very good at it!

I think this new branding will help with that. Historically, we’ve been quite modest, focusing more on delivery than marketing. But we’ve brought in some new people to help improve our visibility, take a more strategic approach, and increase our presence at industry events. The rebrand should reinforce our expertise and open doors with new clients who may not have considered us before.

Definitely! Now, let's talk about supply chain. We won’t cover everything, or we’d be here all week! But what do you think are the biggest challenges in maintaining a strong, high-performing supply chain?

Absolutely right, Sean—it’s a massive topic. When we talk about supply chain, we’re talking about individuals, companies, SMEs—it’s a vast and complex network. At the end of the day, we’re only as good as our supply chain. We have to take responsibility for leading it—finding the work, creating the right environment and culture—because we want to retain talent and loyalty. We need our supply chain to choose working with us over our competitors.

We nurture our supply chain, invest in relationships, and remain loyal to them. But if we’re going to support our growth, we need more suppliers. We need them to expand, and we also need fresh talent. The industry-wide skills shortage is one of the biggest challenges we face. Everyone knows the workforce is ageing, and we need more young people entering the sector.

But the reality is, we can only respond to the opportunities that exist—we can’t create the work ourselves. We need clients to be more realistic about their expectations. Short-term contracts, six-month or one-year jobs, won’t deliver social value or create sustainable employment. What we need are long-term partnerships, long-term contracts, and visible project pipelines. That’s what will truly strengthen the supply chain.

How do you currently split subcontracted work?

This comes up a lot, and we’re always honest about it. All of our management is 100% directly employed—though, of course, we use a few agency staff when needed for holiday cover or short-term gaps. But we believe in directly employing our management team because it’s crucial for our culture. We want Lovell people leading our programmes.

That said, direct employment isn’t always practical. Workloads fluctuate—one month we might be surveying and waiting for approvals, with very little work happening. We can’t have a full team sitting idle during those periods. So, we take a hybrid approach. Certain trades, such as asbestos removal, gas, electrical, and scaffolding—are always subcontracted because of their specialist nature.

Beyond that, it depends on the project’s volume and location. Ideally, we’d aim for a 50/50 split between direct delivery and subcontracting, but right now, we’re probably more like 70-80% in favour of subcontracting. That’s not necessarily the perfect balance, and we’re reviewing it. With customer expectations increasing, a more direct labour force could help us improve service consistency. But again, we have to be pragmatic—if a project stalls for three months while waiting on a budget or stock data, what do we do with all those directly employed workers?

Do you think having a fully branded, directly employed workforce—wearing Lovell uniforms and driving Lovell vans—would be beneficial?

There are two sides to that. Increased visibility is definitely a positive—you see our vans around Birmingham, and it reinforces our presence. But branding alone doesn’t make a contractor great. Our reputation is built on doing the right thing—delivering quality work, keeping promises, and maintaining high standards. More Lovell vans on the road would be great, but what matters most is the work we’re doing in people’s homes.

One of the questions I’m here is to ask is there a good example of how the training and upskilling has worked within Lovell? You're a prime example and you've worked your way up the train you. Have you got any other examples of how this is really paid off and works for individuals themselves.

Yeah, my boss Stewart is the same, he was the year intake before me. The regional MD Beth who is younger than us, she's come through the ranks exactly the same. Only ever worked for Lovell 22 years. She’s regional MD of the East Mids business. You don't have to be a regional MD for success. Back in the day you knew you were in town for you know, five, ten years and you were expected to do social value and you delivered it because you had that longevity. We were taking people off the estates where we were working. There were van drivers, there were labourers who were tradesmen. Kev’s was a classic example. Again he's got 20 years service. He was a Van Driver. He was becoming a Wall Tiler. He's a Site Manager there and he's proud as punch and he's got his relatives now working for us. These are real success stories. Equally with supply chain. We've got one tradesman that works for us because you support them. We work and pipeline and you pay them regularly. They're able to invest and their teams grow, their businesses grow and it's part of it is to see their success and they know the loyalty and hopefully always favour us over others because we've helped them achieve. 

What kind of issues have you faced when trying to onboard new subcontractors to ensure that they can deliver to the level that you do?

We've got our good people that we know and trust and we've levelled them up, and they know what we want. We’re probably sometimes guilty of overburdening them, hands up. Sometimes we overrun and you can quickly make a very good contractor, an average or a poor contractor. It's a part that we have to be responsible and allocate the work appropriately, equally. You don't want people travelling out to town to service a job, new contract, you want to impress. They take your good talent down. You know, you've got to be careful, don't fall into that trap. So awarding and management is a huge part of our business. But we need new blood. We need to recruit new blood and you've got to find them.

So that can sell, sell, sell, but you're only as good as the people on the ground. So it's, supervision. So we ask all the right men, everybody does the same. We have our onboarding, and you can ask all those questions around competencies, experience and training but you don't overburden a really good Plasterer, with the people. We don't overburden them and scare them off. So this is where you've got to have the right level of compliance. We've got to build those bridges, we've got to help them out and we've got to support them in filling in the form.

That balance is difficult one to get right. But equally, we see driving down the road, we see DIY Bob the Builder, standing on a milk crate. You can't do that when you're working for a tier one contractor you can't do that. And that's the culture. How do you get them to price that? So you pricing it, you give aspect, you give my trade requirements, give my health and safety standards. Do they read it? Do they understand it? And then it's that education piece to say you I want you to have a 600 pound on tool dust extractor unit. I don't need that. This is what you need to work for us. But we'll reward you with more work. You have as much success as you have failure.

It's making sure we're trying to give them the fair chance. Setting the standards, supervising them, checking in. But it ultimately hits the point where they're never going to get where we need. They're never going to hit the standards, they're never going to have the same culture. It's interesting to see who they work for, where they've worked for, because whilst you think we're all the same, we're all going to have a different sort of. There's more than one way to skin a cat. I know that everybody runs contracts in very, very slightly different ways. I've had Operatives that have gone from working for one in one of my clients who's done an absolutely cracking job there to, to another client and they do things ever so slightly differently and it's been a car crash. So you can understand that. 

So how does that kind of help, knowing where these people have worked before?

Carl Yale: I think sometimes you take some comfort. You want a new contract. The people who used to deliver it for the previous. They know the score, they know the client, they know the process. That's fine, but might sound a bit salesey. But I want to do it the Lovell way. I don’t want to do it the competitor way. No, I want to do it the Lovell way. So yes, they know with the spec, they know the client, they know what to do. That's good. I want to do the other way now. That's problem we've got to be sure of. We're setting our expectations. We're setting a bar that's, that's appropriate and not a lower bar. Sometimes we say why are clients picking us? What do we do if we're just going to sub it all out? What are we doing? What value are we adding? That’s something I'm really quite precious about. We want to do with our values and our culture because we think it's better than others.

How do you embed someone into the company culture? 

It's going to take time and investment. We can have all the onboarding workshops, and "The Lovell Way" is important—that’s what we do. A lot of people here have been with Lovell for a long time, and they’re really proud of that. It’s a bit like a family, and we need to maintain that culture. These operatives probably don’t fully understand the pricing model, the financials, or the commitments we've made. It’s all about sharing that knowledge. We have to help them move past what happened last time—the old rates, the old specifications. This is how it works now. Some people will come in and fully embrace the new way of working. Others will resist, sticking to what they’ve always done, just trying to see their time out. You’re always going to have winners and losers. The key thing is having a strong business infrastructure, with dedicated resources, proper supervision, and training.

Ultimately, if someone refuses to get on board, then decisions may need to be made from an HR or disciplinary perspective. But with the number of people we’re bringing in, I’d be delighted if we get this right.We just need to follow through on what we say we’re going to do and manage people properly. Hopefully, they’ll see the commitment here. Lovell is a great company to work for—we try to do the right things, provide a good environment, and offer solid benefits. Hopefully, that’s enough to get people engaged and invested.

What are the biggest issues you have trying to find and build a supply chain in a new area?

We've worked in Bristol before, so hopefully it'll be reigniting some old relationships an old contacts. But what we where we have been guilty in the past, being honest, is taking the good people from the Midlands down, and that doesn't benefit anybody, sitting on the M5 backwards and forward. We want to do it organically. You want to do it the right job. What we're very good at Lovell is winning a job and growing a job. Yes, we've not got the biggest marketing budget in the world. We're not the biggest and you don’t see many vans run around, but I think clients know that we'll do good high quality work for them, we're known by the great jobs we do..

What kind of advice would you give to people looking to get into planned maintenance and social housing?

I think when young people, like my son, look at careers in construction, they don’t always associate jobs in sectors like Occupy Total with exciting opportunities. When they come to Birmingham, they might see the tower cranes and large-scale civil engineering projects, but they may not appreciate the wide range of roles behind the scenes, such as professional, design, and softer skills-based jobs. If someone has even a slight interest in construction but isn’t sure where to start, we should be guiding them. Of course, I’d love to direct them to Lovell all day, but as part of the Morgan Sindall Group, there are so many opportunities available. That’s where CITB and the wider skills sector should step in—having a clear website or platform where young people can be directed and funneled into different career paths. We already work with colleges like Birmingham City College, but many young people don’t know what they want to do at first. That’s why they need to attend trade fairs, visit colleges, check out websites, and most importantly, not feel intimidated. Just reach out, come talk to us. We want new people in the industry.

One area we sometimes fail in is supporting young people who say, “I want to be an electrician, how do I get a job?” Right now, the approach is often to ask an electrical contractor, “Will you take on this person?” But that’s not always the best way. Some contractors are fully set up for apprenticeships with annual intakes, but for others, it’s just a box-ticking exercise. Are they truly invested in training and mentoring these young people? Are they giving them the support they need?

Back in the day, apprenticeships meant being properly trained by experienced mentors, building strong networks, and having a sense of camaraderie on-site. But now, with everyone rushing around, that culture is fading. We need to do better—whether we’re tier-one contractors, clients, or CITB. We need to make construction appealing, so young kids look at it and say, “That’s something I want to do.” They should see the range of opportunities and then come talk to the big organisations, visit trade fairs, and explore colleges. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is attitude. It’s simple, are you willing to get up early in the morning, even when it’s raining? Are you ready to put in the effort? Because not everyone is. But for those who are, construction is an incredibly rewarding career.

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