An estate agency boss says his company is exploring new ways to market itself and maintaining its sales levels despite challenging conditions for high street property companies.

Aidan Lillington - the director if Lillingtons Ltd, the company behind Lillingtons Estate Agents - said competition from online estate agency services, offering lower fees, had made life harder for their bricks and mortar counterparts.

"It's hard to operate a high street model on an internet only fee," he said.

"It's been disruptive for the marketplace, but for the ones that survive it makes us a better agent."

On Companies House, the company Lillington's Estate Agents Ltd - incorporated in 2007 - is listed as in liquidation.

Aidan said the company had been put into liquidation after his wife Jayne, who was a director, left the firm.

He incorporated a new company in April 2017, named Lillingtons Ltd, which is now the company behind the estate agency business.

Aidan is the sole director of Lillingtons Ltd.

In the last two weeks, the business closed its Workington branch, leaving it with two offices in Cockermouth and Whitehaven.

"We've just come to the end of a 10 year lease at our Workington branch and we decided to close that," said Aidan.

He said there had been no job losses due to the liquidation or closure and that staff from the Workington office were now based in Whitehaven.

"We have ported our whole team over to our Whitehaven branch and they still operate in that area from a remote base," he said.

He said business was steady for the company, which employs 13 people, and did not seem to have been affected by the general uncertainty over Brexit.

"Our business levels have remained constant and fear of Brexit doesn't seem to be affecting the sales market," he said.

"Proactive agents are starting to look at different types of marketing. New methods have come into play like social media targeted marketing and things like that are bringing something positive for us and that's bringing good results."