Discover King’s Lynn is excited to introduce the Business Spotlight feature to our website! Each week Discover King’s Lynn will be shining a light on a local, town centre business to highlight the wide array of talent we are lucky enough to have here in King’s Lynn.
We will be asking each featured business a series of questions so you can get to know a little bit more about what they do and who they are.
This week we were fortunate enough to speak with Natalie Barton, Accounts & Media Administrator of Brittons Lettings.
Brittons Lettings is an independent lettings agency based on the Tuesday Market Place. We specialise in offering a residential lettings and management service for rental properties in and around King’s Lynn and West Norfolk. The business will enter its 34th year this year and has operated in King’s Lynn town centre since 1994.
Having everything on our doorstep is fantastic. We especially love the events on the Market Place – some days can be food stalls, other times a medieval parade! And we also get to meet so many people being where we are. King’s Lynn is a perfect sized town for getting to know people from a variety of different places. Being the inaugural King’s Lynn Champions at the Mayor’s Business Awards last year came about due to our love for the town which translated into the way that we work.
Brittons was founded by our director Kath Britton in 1988. She was a landlord who started to manage other people’s properties too and the business grew from there. Her first office was based in Terrington St Clement and has grown over the years to see us where we are on the Tuesday Market Place. We now fully manage around 200 properties as well as providing marketing, set-up, and management services on a Let Only or bespoke basis for more experienced landlords.
Being an independent lettings agency gives us a freedom to do things our own way within the requirements of the sector, and we operate our business with both a heart and a head. We’re motivated by providing the best service we can by being adaptable to clients’ needs.
We also take a genuine interest in the community around us and work to raise standards and awareness of the private rented sector. The whole team is experienced and qualified in lettings and beyond my job for Brittons, I am also a regional rep for Propertymark, the foremost professional and regulatory body for the property industry. Such involvement in the immediate community and the wider sector gives us a depth of knowledge to pass on to our landlords and tenants and those looking for a new home.
On a day-to-day basis in the office, we work as a team of three, each bringing different skills and interests to the company.
Natasha is our Lettings Manager. She’s brilliant at being strategic and working to achieve what needs to be done – she’s an absolute powerhouse!
Kayleigh is our Property Manager. She has the unenviable task of managing maintenance issues and also carries out property inspections at various points of the tenancies. Her favourite part of her job is getting to meet the babies born to our tenants.
Finally, I get to handle the client accounts – processing rents and chasing any arrears – and I am also in charge of our social media content and landlord newsletters. I’m probably best known for chatting too much, but I’m always interested in both people and the lettings sector so it doesn’t take much to set me off!
Kath then keeps a maternal eye over us to make sure we do the best for the business.
I’ve worked for Brittons since 2014. It’s really hard to define one thing that I love about my job because there’s so much that I do. I love seeing someone find the right property, I love resolving issues so that both tenants and landlords are happy and I love that we get to sustain relationships with them too. I also love that I’m allowed the freedom to bring new ideas forward to the business and I get the time to work so closely with Propertymark. But best of all I love working with Natasha, Kayleigh and Kath – we all have different skills and personalities that bring the best out of each other.
We are about more than just letting houses. We work to the highest of industry standards, yet still remain approachable and adaptable to the needs of our clients. We want people to love where they live and for our landlords have a security in their investment in rental property as a result of our industry expertise. We very much work as a team to provide the best service that we can.
The private rented sector is always evolving and facing new challenges, but COVID is the biggest yet! We’ve had to shape the way we work to be able to offer COVID-secure practices as we’ve been a sector encouraged to keep operating. But the future will hopefully allow us to bring together the use of technology, such as virtual tours and e-signing of documents, with the perks of an in-person service – the best of both worlds! I actually feel optimistic about the way we’ll work as we get to go back to “normal”.
We’ve really missed having events literally on our doorstep and it’s been strange to see the Tuesday Market Place so empty. But the business community has still pulled together online thanks to Discover King’s Lynn. The support has been gratifying and strangely I’ve got to know many people better than when we were all so tied up in our day-to-day business. I really hope that those connections made over lockdown will help the town centre thrive and come back stronger than ever.
That we are a really strong team who can pull together through the toughest of times!
What-a Hoot gin has already been mentioned a couple of times, but I’d love to see an ice cream version of the Earl of Tawny cocktail the Dukes Head created last summer. It was based on the Tawny Orange gin, Earl Grey tea and marmalade. It would be perfect for a sunny day sat outside on the Tuesday Market Place!
Brittons Lettings continues to operate throughout this Lockdown period Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, by email, telephone or pre-arranged appointments only. To get in touch: email, call or visit the website.
Check back next week to see who Discover King’s Lynn will be shining the spotlight on next!
Please note, the ideas and opinions expressed within this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of Discover King’s Lynn, the King’s Lynn BID.