Veteran entrepreneur Craig McColligan, the founder of nationwide building maintenance business RMS, which he sold to building firm Rok for £6.5 million in 2001, has been forced to self-fund his latest venture, 2gether Property Maintenance, following what he considers to have been a failure by his bank to offer reasonable terms for an overdraft facility.

2gether Property Maintenance, resurrected from the former RMS, provides a nationwide reactive maintenance service via an innovative facilities management structure whereby experienced call centre staff based in Glasgow service clients through a nationwide network of operatives and associates.

Despite what he believes to have been a lack of support from his bank, McColligan has proceeded to make a success of 2gether Property Maintenance – turnover has increased by 30 per cent over the past three months and is on target to reach £1.2 million. And having started with seven customers, it now has 22, including such household names as Reed Personnel Services, ATS and Hays Recruitment.

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McColligan attributes that success partly to the fact that, as a service business, 2gether Property Maintenance pays out to its operatives and associates within 14 days of receiving an invoice, thereby effectively helping fund more than 40 small property-related companies up and down the country, at a time when he himself received no funding assistance from his bank.

“Even with my own wealth and extensive track record in this sector, my bank - The RBS - was not prepared to help with start-up costs without it costing me a great deal of money and on ridiculous terms, so I had no option but to fund 2gether Property Maintenance myself,” he said.

“I was seeking £200,000 as an overdraft to launch a business that I’d effectively sold for £6.5 million some years previously and the offer they came back with carried a margin obligation of 3.5%, an administration fee of £3000 and a £200,000 personal guarantee, which effectively meant that it would have cost me a small fortune to borrow my own money back.

“That makes me wonder what happens to all the poor guys out there trying to fund new businesses if they don’t already have any personal reserves to fall back on. The banking sector is not currently supporting entrepreneurs and until they start doing so, it is difficult to see how the private sector is going to be able to recover sufficiently to help address the gap left by a declining public sector following the cuts imposed by the Coalition government.”

2gether Property Maintenance is part of the 2gether Group, a new and unique kind of business hub established to create an environment for embryonic and established companies to access a range of financial expertise.

(GK)