The people who turn up

One van and a rule about the phone

Dan spent nine years working for a big heating firm in Leicester and left because of the phone. Customers rang, nobody picked up, and by the time someone did they'd found another plumber. So the first thing Hartwell had, before a second van or a proper yard, was a rule that the phone gets answered by a person, seven days a week.

Eighteen years later there are four engineers, three vans and a yard on Forge Row, and Jo answers roughly sixty calls a day. Most of the work still comes from people who were given the number by a neighbour.