A4e's accounts for 2011 - 2012 published

The accounts for the year to March 2012 have been published.  Company accounts are not easy reading unless you're an accountant, but there are some interesting facts to be extracted.

Emma Harrison was paid £1.5 million in dividends when she stepped down as Chair in February.  There were no dividends paid after that, and no more will be paid up to March 2013, because they need to invest in the Work Programme.  It was an expensive year.  The parent company made a loss of £1,007,000 after dividends were paid, compared to a profit of £15,158,000 in the previous year.  Actual revenue was significantly down.  In the UK it was £127,126,000 compared to £215,616,000 in the year.  Revenue from Australia was up a lot because of the acquisition of a company there.

The preamble declares that they pay the Living Wage and intend to raise pay according to new recommendations in April 2013.  They have chosen to follow the Hutton Review of Fair Pay and pay the Chief Exec no more than 10x median adult full time salary.  Directors' emoluments (pay etc.) for the year total £2,327,000, less than last year.  The highest paid director got £416,000.

There are some bits and pieces of money spent on services, including:

• £188,000 to Andromeda Park, a conference management company owned by the Harrisons; 
• £816,000 to Thornbridge Ltd for lease of property (more than the previous year); 
• £81,000 to Elite Pension Scheme, of which the Harrisons are beneficiaries.

A small note tells us that on 24 April 2012 Medex Training Ltd was "struck off".  This was a company acquired by A4e in 2006 - see my post from October 2009.  It's been dormant for some time.  I wonder what happened.

If you want to examine the full accounts, go to the Companies House website.  You can download it for only £1.

Medex and the care home industry

An article in the Yorkshire Post tells of a deal between Medex Training and the care home multi-millionaire Lawrence Tomlinson to provide training for 500 new staff for 11 new homes. What has that got to do with A4e? Medex is part of A4e. It was originally formed in 2005 to provide courses like first aid and resuscitation to people who worked in various medical areas. In 2006 Emma Harrison made it "part of the A4e group of companies" and extended the sort of training Medex provided, focussing on the care industry. Presumably it was a good fit with New Deal, enabling A4e to put clients through short courses relatively cheaply. And it's an even better fit with FND, if the deal with Tomlinson is anything to go by. The article doesn't say whether the new staff are coming from the FND client list, but it would make sense.