Building a fire and security platform across England

Neovian Group is a long-term buyer of compliance-led fire and security services businesses. We seek majority stakes in firms with contracted maintenance books, strong accreditations and management teams that stay.

Confidential enquiry Acquisition criteria

Focus: Fire & security services
Geography: England · clustered
Ownership: Majority · share purchase
Handover: Vendor stays 12 to 24 months

Contracted booksService and maintenance revenue held directly with owners and landlords.

Teams retainedEngineers and managers stay. Culture is part of what we buy.

Vendor handoverOwners remain for a structured 12 to 24 months.

England focusOne serviceable cluster in the North West, Midlands, London or South East.

What we look for

Indicative criteria drawn from our acquisition brief. Every business is reviewed on its merits. Figures are guides for owners and advisers, not hard cut-offs.

Platform	Fire alarm, extinguisher and emergency lighting service and maintenance; fire risk assessment; intruder, CCTV and access control. Revenue typically £2m to £6m. Adjusted EBITDA typically £400k to £800k; we will also review larger businesses around £1m to £1.5m.
Quality of earnings	Contracted service, maintenance and monitoring ideally 55% or more of revenue. Installation under about 40%. Healthy EBITDA margin and cash conversion. Engineer retention that shows a stable delivery culture.
Customers and people	Direct contracts with building owners, occupiers, managing agents or landlords. No single customer dominating the book. BAFE, NSI Gold or SSAIB preferred, with ISO 9001 a plus. A competent second-in-command and an operations lead who stay.
Geography	England only. One serviceable cluster within about 90 minutes of the operating base. Priority: North West, Midlands, London and the South East. The first platform deal sets the map for later bolt-ons.
Structure	Share purchase. We exclude revenue that sits behind FM primes. The test question is simple: who signs the contract and who pays the invoice?

Full approach

Process

A straightforward path from first conversation to completion.

Introduction

Confidential conversation with owners or advisers. No obligation.

Fit review

We test the book against our criteria: recurring quality, customers, people, geography.

Terms

Share purchase structure, handover plan, and a stay of 12 to 24 months for the vendor.

Completion

Teams stay, customers stay, and the platform begins its next chapter.

Leadership

Neovian Group is led by Daniel Francis and Carl Lowe, co-directors who combine public profile and long-term capital with hands-on experience building and acquiring UK service businesses.

View team