Richardson Projects enjoys 9% profit margin

Richardson Projects, the new-build social housing specialist, enjoyed a rise in profit margin to 9% last year.

The group’s turnover in the 12 months to 31 August 2007 ran to £48m and the pre-tax profit was £4.3m.

Richardson’s previous figures of £40m turnover and £3.0m pre-tax profit also left a handsome margin of 7.5%.

The company now has a new owner, Rok, having bought Richardson Projects three months ago for £41m. The attraction, said Rok chief executive Garvis Snook, was that Richardson undertakes its work using its own labour force.

Apart from 19 administration staff, Richardson’s other 308 employees were all involved in the production process.

The wage and salary bill in 2007 ran to £7.1m with a further £158,000 allocated to pension costs, more than double the figure in the previous year.

The sum paid out to directors fell dramatically from more than £1m in 2006 to a latest figure of £420,000.

The highest-paid individual director earned £178,000 in 2007 made up of a salary of £97,000 plus a further £81,000 to his pension scheme. In the previous year he earned £436,000 in total.

While the directors took less pay back in 2006 they did share in a dividend running to £500,000 that year, whereas there was no dividend at all this time round.