Meet the Vigo Group MD who is celebrating 50 years in the property business and has no plans to retire

"I hadn’t been told that but it was a feeling I had that this was a permanent change,” he adds. “Most immigrants who come to England, even today, will say they’re only here for five years but there’s a very small percentage who actually leave.”

Shah’s father was a landowner who brought his family to Doncaster with the intention of creating a more prosperous life. He set up a business buying council houses that were earmarked for demolition and renting them out. The business grew into property development as councils began to give grants for people to improve their houses.

In 1973, fresh out of college, Shah, the eldest of eight children, joined the Vigo family firm and began buying and renovating houses.

"I always wanted to be a builder but my parents wanted me to be a doctor or a chemist or a dentist,” says Shah. “My mother used to make excuses to people and tell them I was doing a course. Construction and manual labour, certainly in Asian countries, is seen as the lowest job but building just fascinated me because you’re leaving a legacy.”

Shah immediately demonstrated a profound entrepreneurial spirit, keen to enhance communities and the lives of people.

During the eighties, he started building new homes and established a plant hire company for motorway construction. He went on to build and sell a chain of nursing homes.

Over the last 50 years, Vigo has tackled a diverse range of projects, from single homes to large industrial sites.

However, the two things that remain on his bucket list are a bridge and a tower.

"I’d like to build an office block or an apartment block,” he says.