Finance

Adrian Jones, Finance Director

Increasing confidence in the financial performance quickly built as the year progressed, vindicating the earlier decisions that had been made, and allowing the business to start focusing on plans for 2022/23.”

At the time of writing the latest financial year to the end of March 2022 has just been completed and it’s naturally a good time to reflect upon the changes that have taken place in the first full year of recovery after the start of the Covid pandemic. Whilst we will be reporting another strong set of results, the financial outcome doesn’t fully reflect the significant changes that have been taking place in the business operations and organisation, nor the strategic plans that are now in the process of being implemented.

It is fair to say that as we approached April 2021 there was a degree of trepidation about what a “post-Covid” recovery might look and feel like. The business had finished the previous “Covid year” with an increasingly strong performance as confidence gained, but there was no guarantee that the recovery would be sustained. The 2021/22 plans were very cautious in this regard but they did include an ambitious intention to recover the pre-Covid levels of capital expenditure, investment and recruitment that had been subdued during the previous year. It was felt that it was time to recapture some of the ground lost during Covid.

Additionally, the business had committed during the summer of 2020 to a plan to “divisionalise” the business, moving away from a regional management structure to one that was based upon the services being delivered to the clients. This would be accompanied by a deep-rooted change in the financial reporting structure of the business that would facilitate a much deeper understanding of service and client profitability. All of these changes were implemented at the start of the new financial year in April 2021 and so form the backdrop to the latest annual step in the firm’s growth and development trajectory.

Increasing confidence in the financial performance quickly built as the year progressed, vindicating the earlier decisions that had been made, and allowing the business to start focusing on plans for 2022/23. Notwithstanding the challenges the firm expects to be posed by the cost of living crisis and recruiting the right number and calibre of employee in a difficult market, the plans include a series of significant new investments in fresh, modern and innovative office space and the identification of a prospective merger partner that will take the business into key city centre locations for the first time, further broadening the range of services offered by the firm.