About MARL
A contractor built around the gaps other contractors leave
We build, finish and maintain property across London, Greater London, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Surrey — three disciplines under one point of contact, so nothing falls between them.
MARL was set up on a straightforward observation: most property projects do not fail on craftsmanship. They fail in the handovers — between the builder and the decorator, between the decorator and whoever maintains the place afterwards, and between a quotation and the invoice that eventually arrives.
So we built the company to cover all three stages. Structural work, finishing and ongoing maintenance are delivered by teams that answer to the same contracts manager, work to the same written scope, and inherit each other’s work rather than discovering it.
We are deliberately not the cheapest quotation you will receive. We are the one that includes the preparation, states the programme, and puts the variations process in writing before you need it.
The name on the work. The mark on our vans and on this page is a house built from an M — steel around a molten core. It is a reasonable summary of the business: a hard, protective shell around work that has real heat and craft in it.
10+
Years trading
Building, decorating and maintaining
3
Disciplines
Under a single point of contact
48h
Quotation turnaround
For standard domestic works
100%
Written quotations
Itemised before work begins
What we hold to
Four things we will not trade away
Say the difficult thing early
A problem raised at survey stage is a conversation. The same problem raised at week six is a dispute. We would rather lose a job at the quotation stage than deliver one badly.
Price the whole job
Preparation, protection, making good and waste are real costs. Leaving them out of a quotation does not make a project cheaper — it just moves the cost to a point where you have no leverage.
Leave a property better than the brief
The brief covers what you asked for. If we can see something that will fail in two years, we tell you now — whether or not it is our work to do.
Keep the site liveable
Most of our work happens in occupied homes and trading premises. Protection, sequencing and a clean site at the end of each day are part of the job, not a courtesy.
Capability
What we cover
01 / CONSTRUCTION
Construction
Extensions, loft conversions and structural alterations, delivered with the drawings, the building control sign-off and the programme all held in one place.
Details02 / DECORATING
Decorating
Preparation-led interior and exterior decorating, plastering and specialist coatings — the trades where the standard of the finish is decided long before the topcoat.
Details03 / MAINTENANCE
Property maintenance
Reactive repairs and planned maintenance for landlords, managing agents and commercial premises — with response times, records and one number to call.
DetailsAssurance
Insurance, records and the boring parts
Insurance
Public liability and employer's liability cover in place on every project. Certificates are available on request — ask any contractor for them before work starts.
Written records
Scope, variations, programme changes and maintenance visits are documented and supplied to you in a format you can keep.
Waste and compliance
Waste is removed by licensed carriers with transfer documentation retained, and building control inspections are coordinated at the required hold points.
In short
Why clients stay with us
The quotation is the price
Itemised, fixed and written. Variations exist only where the scope genuinely changes, and every one is agreed with you in writing before the work is carried out.
One contact, not a rota
A single contracts manager stays with your project from survey to handover. You never have to explain the job twice or chase three trades for the same answer.
Three trades, one standard
Construction, decorating and maintenance sit under one roof. The team that forms the opening is the team that plasters and paints it, so nobody inherits somebody else's shortcuts.
Preparation is priced properly
The stages that decide whether work lasts — groundworks, substrate preparation, protection — are costed as their own line items rather than quietly compressed to win a job on price.
We snag our own work
We produce the defect list before you do, and close it before the final invoice. A handover should be the end of the job, not the beginning of a negotiation.
Records you can keep
Scope, variations, programme changes and maintenance visits are documented. It protects you, and it means the next contractor — even if it is not us — inherits a property that is understood.
Let's talk about your property.
A short call is usually enough to tell whether we are the right contractor for what you are planning.