Our History

Today, Lanes Group is the UK’s largest privately owned drainage contractor, with more than 2,200 skilled professionals working in 25 depots, utility hubs and offices across the country.

But it wasn’t always this way...

1992 - 2002: the first ten years

Lanes Group was established back in 1992 with just 15 members of staff in a small industrial unit in Leeds.

It only took another year to establish a second depot - this time in Rotherham, South Yorkshire - and only two years to reach £1 million in turnover for the first time. With a number of strategic hires - many of whom are still with us serving as directors - we set the foundation early for a successful business within the drainage industry.

By 1997, the Lanes family had grown to 100 staff, underpinned by an increase in turnover to £5 million. By 2002 these numbers had doubled again, following ten acquisitions, 11 depot openings and a shiny new headquarters in Leeds.

2003 - 2013: a successful second decade

We began the second decade of our operations by expanding into Scotland and reaching the £25 million turnover mark, before winning our first of four supplier recognition awards from Royal Mail. That wasn’t the only award we won during this time - we also claimed our first UKSTT and RoSPA Silver awards.

We then made strides into the insurance marketplace by creating Lanes Assistance Services, before securing some of the most important clients in our history - such as Severn Trent Water, Anglian Water and Thames Water. The latter led to a £35 million investment in plant and equipment, as well as the creation of a new state-of-the-art contract HQ in Slough.

All of this significant success led to us achieving £100 million turnover and 1,000 staff by the end of our first 20 years of trading.

2013 - today

Even after such considerable success, we have continued to go from strength to strength in our third decade.

Recognition continued to come our way - the RoSPA Gold Medal for occupational health and safety, the H&S Excellence award at the Construction News Specialist Awards, and the highly commended prize for Technical Innovation of the Year (Infrastructure) at the Light Rail Awards, to name but a few examples.

Driven by a dedication to providing the best professional development opportunities to our staff, we also worked with City & Guilds to gain accreditation for our own drainage engineering training course.

What’s more, Lanes Utilities some invested £60,000 in the development of a unique, state-of-the-art, 360-degree projection theatre called the Igloo at the CSC Centre in Slough. The interactive learning space delivers wraparound sound and vision, allowing teams to feel what it’s like to be in a sewer and take part in realistic, true-to-life training scenarios.

Our taste for innovation didn’t stop there, as we took delivery of a range of specialist 8 x 8 jet vac units, making it possible for us to access difficult sites that previously would have been considered inaccessible, and launched a UV lining service offering to customers throughout the UK.

Yet more significant contracts were won in this time, too, such as numerous contracts with Scottish Water, a utility contract with Severn Trent, a wet waste management contract with BP, and the Area 2 South contract of the Thames Water operating region - the first time that one single contractor has held the whole of London on a wastewater network services contract.

What’s more, we made our first acquisition outside of the UK mainland by purchasing the AQS business in Ireland, as well as acquiring UKDN Waterflow Ltd and UKDN Technical Services Limited.

By our 25th anniversary, turnover had reached £200 million.

So, that’s our story from day one -  now, can you help us shape our history for years to come?