It was in the early years of the 1990s where a young man of farming heritage decided to pursue the art of installing septic tanks! Not shy of a bit of hard graft and with an immense pride in his work, the name of Alistair Dalton became the ‘go to’ man in the area.

With an unrivalled work ethic Alistair was quick to spread his wings and by 2003 R A Dalton had officially grown to become a limited company, this means that as of August this year we will officially be celebrating 20 years of being limited!

At this time operations out on the road were handled by 5/6 site engineers with the administrative element running out of the dining room of our office manager Karen. By 2008 it was determined that a central base of operations was required and thus R A Dalton’s head office at Cowshill was born.

Located on a rural farm in the North Pennines our new hub was central to the local lads that had been employed to carry out the installations and routine servicing.

It was very early on in the development of R A Dalton that Alistair first began working alongside Kingspan Klargester and quickly cemented a strong working relationship which still stands to this day. As word spread of the proficient Septic tank specialists the workload continued to increase and a divide between servicing and installations soon became too much to warrant just one team c0-ordinating. Thus in 2011 we welcomed our Servicing manager Vicky Gascoigne into the company with the intention of expanding our servicing portfolio even further.

By 2015 all sectors of the company had multiplied resulting in our ‘Southern’ office opening in Chesterfield with Robin Preston and Helen Marshall at the helm, this solidified our customer base in the south covering all areas down to Lands End.

Our office in Scotland was soon to follow as in early 2016 we welcomed Marion Buchanan on board giving a contact base for all of our customer over the border and up to John O’Groats.

By 2021 we had not slowed down in the slightest and our head office at Cowshill had quickly been outgrown and our northern servicing team relocated to a new office based at Crook leaving installations, QHSE and our accounts team to man Head office.

It is not just the company that has seen the benefit of the industry growth, as someone who has seen how many times have changed within the business it is hard not to appreciate the level of work and knowledge required to keep a company successful in such a specialist field.

In June 2015 I started my role at R A Dalton as a Receptionist and office administrator, I will apologise now if you had dialed 01388 537030 between the years of 2015 and 2019 only to be left with a ringing noise in your ears you are likely to have spoken to me! However you can rest assured that my voice is several decibels lower these days and our reception is manned by the lovely Mandy who has a far more pleasant manner than I could ever dream of.

Over the 8 years I have worked at R A Dalton I spent some time working alongside the servicing team and I can see now that their customer list is easily three times more than it ever was and subsequently the emptying and CCTV surveys required a dedicated team to co-ordinate.

However, I soon found my home at R A Dalton working alongside the installations team and have remained here ever since. When working with our different site teams, contracts managers and manufacturers over the 6/7 years my industry knowledge has expanded for both the wastewater specific side and also in relation to the generic groundwork requirements.

The implementation of the 2020 General Binding Rules has meant that our scope of work has developed and we are now carrying out a lot more connections to mains sewer, these run alongside our usual septic tank/ sewage treatment plant/ drainage installation of which we do upwards of 5-6 jobs every week.

With the growth in this line of work we now also have an experienced team who are dedicated to handling Section 50s, Section 106s, Environment agency permits and any other corresponding work.

As of January 2023, we now officially employ 61 members of staff which is a dramatic jump from the 26 that were employed when I first came to work at R A Dalton ltd.

With company growth also come with a list of associated accreditations which are required by any reputable firm, above being a Klargester accredited installer we are also ISO9001 certified, registered  as Environment Agency waste carriers, and certified with both Construction line and Safe contractor.

As a company we are proud of our family run roots and hope this comes across to our customers giving an approachable and personable feel whenever we carry out a job on your behalf.

Here is to hopefully another 20+ years of development at R A Dalton ltd!