Alex Turner meets STEVE CAUNCE,MD of Steve Caunce Ltd

THERE aren’t many periods of silence when Steve Caunce is speaking. There aren’t, in truth, that many pauses for breath.

But he fell quiet when talking about his proudest achievements.

“I have had two lovely daughters, and now have two lovely grandchildren,” he said.

And what’s your proudest achievement in business?

A silence followed as the man who gave his name to Steve Caunce Ltd, a £3m-turnover specialist drain cleaning firm which employs nearly 50 people in St Helens, sat there in bemusement.

His daughter, Victoria, who was sat with us, suggested he should be proud of his company, which is celebrating, according to its slogan, “25 years of loving sewage”.

“Is this an achievement?” he asked, rhetorically. “Is it pride having this? I don’t know if it’s an achievement.”

Caunce went it alone back in 1985 with no long-term ambitions for his fledgling firm.

“I started the business just to have a job, to feed my kids and my family,” he said.

By then he was nearly 20 years into his working life and had just been made redundant for the fourth time.

He served his time as an apprentice pattern maker at John Varley and Co, but along with the rest of the apprentices in his year, he was let go when the funding stopped at the end of his apprenticeship.

Then he worked on the assembly line at Crosby Springs in Parr, where he met his wife of 35 years, Lynn, but that job ended.

Both moved to Rockware’s bottling plant but seven years later he was made redundant again, as part of a restructure that eventually led to the factory’s closure in 1981 with the loss of 1,500 jobs.

Caunce spent a year at a fibreglass firm in Hindley but when his wife became pregnant for the first time he began looking for another job.

He said: “I went to the job centre and somebody told me to ask if there were any jobs behind the counter.

“They had a job with Dynorod but they wanted someone who could drive and I was 30 and didn’t have a licence.

“That was on Thursday, the following day I took my driving test, I went for an interview on Saturday and started work on Monday.”

He soon realised that this job would not be like those he had done before.

“The first job was a collapsed drain under the floor of a dentist’s in Billinge,” he said. “They had to shut the bank and the grocers next door and there was sewage on all the cars.

“Then we went to a chicken factory where there were live chickens on chains hanging from the ceiling that snaked round the factory.

“One of them get me by the belt – this chicken is dragging me around. The guy I was working with couldn’t see me for chickens going past each other.

“I was thinking this isn’t factory work.

“I liked it. I had no responsibility, I was just doing what I was told. I did that for five years, and found there was a life outside of factories.”

But the axe fell once more, with the workforce offered a chance to set up their own Dynorod franchise. For £15,000, and 40% commission.

Instead Caunce went on his own, although he had no machinery or a vehicle. He bought a van for £500 then went to a rival drainage firm Hydro Clean to see if they could help him get started.

“I drove the Dynorod van up to the front door, and asked if they had any jetting machines for sale,” he said.

“I was given short shrift but just as I was getting back into the van, this guy came out and said ‘tell me what you have just told him’.

“That was Ken Dawson, who was a director. He invited me into the boardroom for a cup of tea and a chat, and I told him I just wanted to make a living.

“Under a tarpaulin at the back of the site there was an old jet machine. He said ‘If I fix that up, what will you give me for it?’ and I said it was worth £1,000 to me if it was working.

“I came back for it a couple of weeks later – we had to bleed it, prime it, change the battery, wind it up, then it belched into life.”

“He wouldn’t take a penny for it until I’d been trading for a year.”

It was a combination of help and hard work that got him established in business, as a partnership with his wife.

“The day came – June 1, 1985 – and I phoned everyone up I knew,” he said. “I had a few customers interested in using me.

“I wrote letters by hand, thousands of them, introducing myself and what I did – I got sick of doing them in front of the television – but the letters were still coming up five years later.”

The business was first run from his house, which became too small so he moved into a derelict unit and a room above the butchers, before he expanded again a couple of years later.

He said: “We took a lease on for 20 years in the Haydock and we stayed for 20 years. Then we moved here [near to St Helens town centre] about two-and-a-half years ago.

“Since we moved here we boomed because people could see us and knew about us.

“Then the recession hit us. We cut back and made sure that nothing was being spent unnecessarily.

“I had just given them licence to spend for a couple of months, but I have just cut back again.”

Being in charge of a company hasn’t always sat comfortably with Caunce.

There have been difficult times and he attributes much of the company’s success to three long-standing employees – John Gough and Andy White, who share managerial responsibilities, and company secretary, Sheila Frodsham.

He said: “As well as drains, we were doing digging work but didn’t know what we were doing. That went to dust.

“I was finding it very difficult and I thought I would flog the business. There was too much hassle, too many problems, too many things going on.

“The managers offered to take it over, but instead I decided to give it another 12 months.

“I came in three days a week for a while then after a while I had 12 months off, at a house in Wales.

“They did more in that 12 months than I did in the five or six years, even 10 years, before then.”

Today his office is a mish-mash of mementoes and memorabilia – from a signed Fernando Torres shirt, to his bowling trophies, a trumpet, family photographs and a copy of an advert for Thomas Crapper & Co’s sanitary specialities.

He still enjoys getting his hands dirty – and not metaphorically either.

“I have been and had a look at a job for a manager who is on holiday this week,” he said. “I have loved it, it’s a bit of fun for me.

“I am a drain cleaner, I am still not a businessman.”