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As the largest of the 150 Local Healthwatch organisations across the UK, Healthwatch Essex collects data from the public about the health and social care services and uses this to help shape and form the way health and care services are designed and delivered across the county.

Chief Executive Officer, Samantha Glover joined as the charity’s new CEO in 2020 with a team of around eight full time staff. Fast forward five years and the team size has almost trebled and is further supported by seven trustees and around 150 volunteers.

With this level of fast-paced growth, it was soon clear to Samantha that there needed to be some focus on the structure of the finance team. Samantha concluded that outsourcing the majority of the finance workstreams was much needed.

With the search for a new accountancy partner now on, a Trustee from Healthwatch Essex gave a personal recommendation to meet with Gascoynes and from the very first meeting Samantha quickly knew they were the right fit for their needs.

“From the outset, it was clear there was instant trust in how they would help me. I was impressed in how they wanted to know where I wanted the charity to go and not just what we were doing there and then. That gave me confidence they were a long-term option for us”

With the high level of workload, Samantha is now able to employ someone part-time to focus on bookkeeping with Gascoynes working closely to deliver any extra support they may require.

Since 2020, Gascoynes has provided bi-monthly management accounting services. Alongside this, they also complete monthly payroll and pension submissions, handle VAT returns with Partial Exemption calculations and all the annual compliance working helping to differentiate between grant income and project income – a key piece of work to support any deferments in line with Charity SORP.

This support extends to being an integral part of the Healthwatch Essex finance team including a Gascoynes Director; Thomas Buckley-Smith sitting on their finance sub-committee ahead of their monthly board meeting and working closely with audits in determining the income and cost allocation between income streams and what needs to be allocated to restricted vs unrestricted reserve accounts.

For Samantha, she feels like they could not be in better hands.

“Everything we do with Gascoynes is just seamless and they are so flexible to our needs. We do not have to worry about fixed fees and therefore when we need help on specific matters, we can just trust them to deliver – whether that’s co-ordinating with our HR team or even discussing matters with our auditors.

“Thomas, Daniel, Matthew and the rest of the Gascoynes team are just so approachable, communicative and flexible. They have been a massive support to me and the charity, and I would 100% recommend them.”

Find out more about Healthwatch Essex here: healthwatchessex.org.uk