Bagnalls Painting & Decorating Contractors

Bagnalls Painting & Decorating Contractors was established in 1875 by founder Alfred Bagnall and remains a family business with over 150 years' experience. It operates six painting and decorating branches across Yorkshire and Humberside. The York branch serves customers in North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire and Humberside, with a team employed from the local area. The York team are skilled commercial decorators who carry out gold leafing, painting of decorative plasterwork and intricate restoration. Commercial painting work includes offices, schools, shopping centres, industrial sites and civil engineering sites. York branch clients include The National Trust, Accent Housing, the City of York Council, Network Rail and Nestlé.

The branch is Railway Industry Supplier Qualification Scheme (RISQS) qualified via audit, and its specialist rail team holds personal track safety (PTS) and Industrial Coatings Applicator Training Scheme (ICATS) qualifications. Bagnalls has long-standing experience delivering station painting on the East Coast main line for Network Rail, with training to work under possession and isolation conditions. It carried out decorative maintenance to structural steelwork at Monks Cross Shopping Centre while it remained open to the public, and has a relationship with St Peter's School in York spanning over 30 years.

Jane Potter is Branch Manager and has been with Bagnalls for 32 years, starting as an apprentice; she represented the UK at the WorldSkills Olympics in Amsterdam in 1990. Bagnalls employs young talent each year through an apprentice training scheme, with apprentices receiving site-based learning and training at the Bagnalls Painting Academy alongside local college attendance. The company won the title of Supreme Winner at The Painting and Decorating Association (PDA) Premier Trophy Awards 2023. It received a RoSPA Gold award, its 17th, and a 3rd Order of Distinction. Its specialist painting, decorating and industrial coatings teams are accredited experts in their fields, and it holds numerous accreditations relating to Health & Safety, the environment, quality, being a fair employer and working with its supply chain. Main services are specialist painting, decorating and industrial coatings.

Bagnalls Painting & Decorating Contractors, trading in York, draws a mixed response from the small number of accounts on file. Exterior work is the strand that receives the warmest words, with the finish applied to outdoor doors and a gate described as excellent, and the staff involved spoken of as approachable. Speed is another theme, one account noting that a job was completed promptly and to a professional standard.

Against that, a separate piece of work on the same project, involving the installation of a new outdoor shed door, attracted sharp criticism, with the keyhole cut described as untidy and considerably oversized. A further account refers not to the decorating side at all but to a signage business trading from an adjacent address, praising that service and its keen pricing, and it is not clear whether the two operations are linked. Taken as a whole the feedback is divided, with the exterior painting attracting the strongest approval and the door fitting the clearest objection, so no single pattern runs through every job.