London House International - Franchise Sales interview

Franchise Sales interview with London House International at The Franchise Show '11

0. Godfrey Lancashire intro
1. A Turn-Key business
2. The Investment
3. Return on Investment
4. What We're looking for
5. What you need

Franchise Opportunities

LHI & The Electoral Register

The Managing Director of London House, Godfrey Lancashire, has warned that the Government's plan to remove the Edited Electoral Register will make it much harder for investigators to trace consumers who have changed address without advising their creditors.

London House franchise owners, who provide a private investigation service for businesses and private individuals, often have to trace debtors for their clients. According to Lancashire the removal of the Edited Electoral Register will not only make it harder to trace debtors, but will also increase the risk of mis-tracing, which will result in an increasing number of wrong consumers being approached for debts they do not owe.

Lancashire said: "London House and industry colleagues have been campaigning for access to the Full Electoral Register for some time. We think it is simply illogical to quite rightly allow the use of the Full Electoral Register to check identity and lend money, but then not to allow us access to the Full Register to correctly identify consumers and help them deal with their debt.

"Most importantly, this is stopping us dramatically reducing the chance of mistakenly approaching the wrong consumer simply because we can't get access to the best and most reliable source of data that is sitting there but can't be used. The Electoral Register is a unique source of data that can't be replicated in any other way.

"We understand the motive behind examining who should have access to the Electoral Register and for what reasons, but ask the Government please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and create a new set of issues which are easily avoidable".

"We want to help the honest consumer find a solution to repay their debt but limit the power of those consumers who want to avoid repayment of debt they can afford."

Godfrey Lancashire at The Franchise Magazine

London House news [Mar. ‘11]

What a busy month! It's still early days but I would suggest that we have had our best exhibition yet at Londons ExCel arena. We had a good number of enquiries from people who are interested in joining the London House network. We are now busy making appointments and the diary is beginning to fill with prospective Franchise Owners who wish to visit us here at London House.

Our individual Franchise Owners web pages are now up and running and can be accessed via the "your nearest office" page on our website. To see an example click here London House Chelmsford

Our blog continues to be developed and will be live by our next newsletter.

This week we are holding a training course to help people with commercial debt collection (B2B) - a growing area.

Please contact us if you would like help.

Commercial Debt Collection

Godfrey Lancashire

The Magnificent 7

We received an instruction from a major firm of solicitors in London, working on behalf of a private bank, to trace and then serve 7 individuals with High Court documents for overpayment of commissions on a £35M share transfer scam. The only information provided was names, false addresses and passport details.

The subjects' last known addresses were in Spain, New Zealand and England.

The operation was named "The Magnificent 7" and our task, once traced, was to serve all 7 individuals at the same time (UK, 10.00am) irrespective of their location. During the course of the operation it became clear that The 7 were very elusive and transient. A team of four was commissioned onto the enquiry and after 14 months we were able to confirm addresses for all 7 subjects. The team was then deployed to travel and serve the High Court documents in London, Wellington in New Zealand, Madrid and Gijón in Spain and Gibraltar. The team was all in place 24 hours beforehand and at 10.00am UK time the next day, all 7 were successfully served. Negotiations then began between our instructing solicitor and their individual solicitors.

Focus On… Outstanding reputation

London House is very proud of it's reputation and that of its Franchise Owners. It is important to our clients, and their clients, that they use a firm of investigators that plays by the rules, as it is their reputation which is at stake.

We CRB check all our Franchise Owners and staff. All of our offices carry Professional Indemnity and Public Liability insurance cover.


All hold a Consumer Credit Licence, are registered for Data Protection and are individual members of The Credit Services Association thereby working to a published Code of Practice.

This is vital when we are working "in the field" or in the office for our clients tracing people, process serving or any other instruction we are asked to undertake, and gives us the competitive edge.

What's in a number?

In Milton Keynes we are all agreed that it is a city of continued growth with a "can do" attitude where we buck the national trend in the current economic climate - but do we?

I have recently seen figures produced by The Insolvency Service (thank you Peter Windatt at BRI for the details) which cover the period 2000-2009. These show, for instance, that in MK (per 10,000 population) the rate of bankruptcies increased from 5.3 to 17.3, the total individual insolvencies increased from 7.2 to 31.1 and I could go on. The surprising figure for me is that the Milton Keynes average for bankruptcy orders was 21.2 per 10,000. The average for the rest of England & Wales was 17.3. It seems we are not immune.