National tax and accountancy franchise TaxAssist Accountants recognised a year of significant success at its national conference, held at Celtic Manor Hotel in South Wales on Saturday 29th March.

The

conference, which saw its 200-strong franchise network gather to discuss future plans, hear from leading market commentator Justin Urquhart-Stewart and welcome Rina Mancini, who this year signed a Regional Master Franchise Licence for the Greater Toronto Area to expand the franchise to Canada, also celebrated wider business success with an awards ceremony hosted by comedian Greg Davies.

As well as launching its business model in Canada, the past twelve months saw client numbers increase to nearly 48,000, fee bank top £32m and sixteen 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 a 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 £230K and 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.”