The conference, which saw its 200 strong franchise network gather, discussed future plans, hearing from leading market commentator Justin Urquhart-Stewart and welcome Rina Mancini, who this year signed a regional Master Franchise License for the Greater Toronto Area to help expand the franchise into Canada. The night also celebrated wider business successes with an awards ceremony hosted by comedian Greg Davies.
As well as launching its business model in Canada, the past 12 months saw client numbers increase to nearly 48,000, fee bank top £32m and 16 new franchisees join the network.
This year’s top winners within the network included Martin Thomas for Most Successful Start Up. Martin joined the network just over and year ago, entering into a franchise partnership with award winning duo Vince Dalaimo and Debbie Corbett to establish an office in Victoria, and in that time has built a fee bank of £230Kand a client base of more than 220 local businesses needing tax advice.
Fastest Growth award went to Bruce Burrowes who joined the network in 2008 and now has two offices in Kingston and Wimbledon with more than 500 clients and a ten-strong team.
This year’s Franchisee of the Year Award went to Mike Turnbull who has been with the network for more than ten years and has three offices in Stockton on Tees, Darlington and Yarm, looking after more than 1000 small business clients. Commenting on the success he said:
“A decade ago I saw an advert for TaxAssist Accountants saying ‘Be your own boss’; that’s exactly what I wanted to do. With the help of TaxAssist Accountants’ support centre I’ve established myself as an integral part of my local small business community, able to help with almost any matter, as I have a hugely experienced network to turn to.”
Karl Sandall, Chief Executive of TaxAssist Accountants said: “It’s been a great year for the network; as well as experiencing significant growth and signing our first regional Master Franchisor in Canada, we’ve picked up a number of prestigious awards including Most Innovative Tax Team of the Year and Best Training and Support provider. We pride ourselves on the support we provide our network. Offering a different proposition to the traditional accountancy practice, we firmly believe that our network should be in shop-front offices in prime high street positions and I’m delighted to say we now have shop-front offices on 165 high-streets across the UK.”
Published: 11 April 2014
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