Cradley Heath gates maker firm is closing
A Cradley Heath gate manufacturer is closing down after 48 years in business. Falling demand for decorative garden gates due to the stagnant housing market has forced Cruddas Security Services to close.
Owner Graham Cruddas said that only he had been left at the Cradley Heath firm which in its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s employed 20 and it had become too much of a struggle to continue.
Mr Cruddas, aged 59, of Quarry Bank, said that the recession of 2007-2008 had been the beginning of the end for the company.
"Since then the housing market has slowed down. People have stopped buying new gates," he explained.
He said that his father Bill Cruddas, who started the company in 1965 with his brother Len, had also died around the same time.
The company had also been hit by a rise in rent after Sandwell Council sold the Oak Street Industrial Park to a property company.
