Richard H Tucker, the managing director of County Durham student lettings and property management firm AAA Property (North East) has been made an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

His MBE was awarded for services to business, skills and the community in the North East. Richard founded AAA Property Services in 2007 following a career in the Royal Air Force as well as spells working for a supermarket chain and a distribution company.

AAA Property, which is based in Newton Aycliffe near Darlington, is unusual because it operates a Caring Caretaker scheme that offers former service personnel work and training within its property management arm.

It looks after a wide variety of different properties including buy-to-lets owned by private landlords as well as commercial, healthcare and educational properties within the North East region.

“As we have grown, we have found getting good quality handyman has been quite hard,” he recently told the Northern Echo newspaper. “That’s where Caring Caretaker comes in, and we have people here who want to work and want a job.

“They are good customer-facing people and what a lot of them don’t want is the repetition some jobs can bring.

“They don’t want to be in an office or working on thousands of widgets each day, they like the variety, independence and responsibility of being out there on their own, which is what they have had all their lives.”

Richard’s MBE adds to already extraordinary tally of honours and awards for both himself and his company. He holds a Gulf Medal and Bar for his service during the 1st Gulf War in 1992 as well as a General Service medal and is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Freeman of the City of London.

His company has won several recent awards too including Property Manager of the Year two years in a row recently in the North-East Student Housing Awards and Employer of the Year at the Northern Star Awards 2016.