Norman Edward Wates (1905–1969), builder and contractor, the eldest of the three sons of Edward Wates, house furnisher and builder, and his wife, Sarah, née Holmes.
His younger brother was Sir Ronald Walace Wates . He was educated at Emmanuel School, Wandsworth, leaving in 1922 to spend a year with a firm of chartered accountants before joining the building firm started by his father and three uncles.
The firm had expanded rapidly after the First World War, building housing estates in south London, and in 1926 it embarked on an estate of 1000 houses in Streatham Vale, which took five years to complete