"There's a strong sense of déjà vu in the air over Extrastaff's head office in St Albans. To Tim Millward, chairman of Extrastaff, it will be perhaps reassuringly normal. This was, you see, the headquarters of Big Jobs, Millward's former business and one which he sold in 1999 for, in his words, "a shedload" of money (reports suggest up to £4m).

He then rented the office to recruitment company Crown plc, before it went into administration. Later, he set up Extrastaff in January 2003 and the office has been under his control, in one form or another, for the past 17 years, since he set up Big Jobs in 1989.

Yet he refutes the suggestion that it's a case of 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. An intense individual not given to grand pronouncements, he told Recruiter: "It's just the way things have worked out. We've been very lucky that we've always had this office here. It wasn't a pre-organised plan."

Again, the fact that they are re-using old offices (Watford, for example) reflects a strategic decision. "We choose the offices we do because of their position: they get good footfall, and we use good branding," says Steve Hill, operations director. "We need a good position because most of our candidates will walk in off the street."

Extrastaff makes no bones about the fact that it is a 'high street' recruiter in the traditional sense of the word, albeit one which focuses on drivers and industrial workers. But surely the high street is cluttered up enough already?""Because we tend to set up in areas where there's a number of recruitment agencies, our focus has to be on providing a service which is slightly better than the others,"" says Millward.

"We want people to come to us rather than the other firms, we want to be where the competition is and we want to be just a little bit better than the competition." The key to making this happen, according to Millward, is knowing the market. "We're good at what we do and we deal with 350 temps a day."

Don't just take his word for it, though: Extrastaff won the 2005 Recruiter Award for Excellence as the Best Regional Recruitment Agency. The organisation, which continues to evolve, now has eight branches across the Home Counties with a headcount of 40, plus the head office. And Millward has big plans for the future. "We would like to open 30 branches nationwide over the next three years and the reason I believe we can do this is because we've got a quality product."

You'd be forgiven for thinking Millward has led a charmed life. A Bentley is parked in his space at head office (he has a love of classic cars), his favourite restaurant is The Ivy, and he was able to sell one business for a substantial amount of money and then set up another, growing enterprise. In between all this, he took time out from recruitment - but retained interests in property - to take an MBA at Imperial College, London.

Yet life has not always been as gilt-edged. Earlier this year, Millward's ex-wife Lisa's lurid account of the break-up of their 12-year marriage filled two pages of copy in a national tabloid newspaper. But Millward is keeping a stiff upper lip about the whole affair. "People gossip about you; what can you say? I keep my business life and my private life separate," is the limit of what he will say on the subject.

Millward remains, above all, a focused individual. Slurs about his private life have done nothing to alter this attitude toward life. Not even a recent horse-riding accident, which resulted in a broken finger, has slowed him down. From a steady start, the momentum of Extrastaff is building to a gallop. The fact that the company's margins are high - at about 29% compared with rivals' typical 20% - has done little to deter clients.

"We don't subscribe to the philosophy of 'pile it high, sell it cheap'," says Hill. "The influx of eastern European labour has eroded margins anyway and we prefer to deliver a good service. That way, people will come back to us.

"We're very pragmatic and very efficient and we want drivers and industrial workers to respect us and know that we're good at what we do."

Being a specialist driving and industrial agency, says Millward, allows them to be focused on the particular sectors they are interested in.

Although Millward does not rule out growth by acquisition ""if the right deal came along,"" there are no firm plans to expand the business in the manner. In Millward's view, there shouldn't be.

"I don't think there's a need [to move into other sectors]. If you do that, you dilute your experience.

"Even if we did buy into another business, we'd keep it absolutely separate from Extrastaff. We wouldn't run the risk of damaging something good for something speculative."

That said, Millward and Hill are well aware that, although they are not keen to pump funds into other business, they need to invest heavily in their own.

As a result of this, net profit on last year's turnover of £6m is "marginal" (about £100,000), with so much being put back into the business.

Millward again: "We expect to have to speculate to accumulate, but even so, we're on target for a turnover of between £7.5 and £8m next year."

Much of this has been invested in consultant training. "We respect our staff and we want people to sell using their personality," says Hill. "We are salespeople, after all."

Mike Sarson has been brought in from Blue Arrow as finance director, and the company is aided further, according to Hill, by the "fantastic quality" of its admin staff. "I'd like to think we're a very positive company,"" adds Hill. ""This is a very good business: we have a low staff turnover and a low sickness record."

Although the picture painted by Millward and Hill makes Extrastaff look to be a viable business to sell, the response to that proposal is emphatic: "There is no exit strategy in place for this business. I've put all my own money into this." He declines to reveal how much but he stresses their is no pressure to sell: "This is not a business which is backed by venture capital."

There is no need for Millward to sell at this stage. His business is on the up and he fears no one. His prediction of 30 branches over the next three years does not seem unreasonable. Millward and his team will be working as hard as they can to achieve this goal.

Millward was unfortunate enough to fall off his horse in real life. But it will take something special to steer Extrastaff, with him as its runner and rider, away from the inside line as they enter the next few furlongs."