London House News

After the seasonal break it is now back to "business as usual" at London House. We are continuing to hold a number of follow up interviews from the NEC Franchise Show in October and are pleased to say that discussions are progressing with a number of prospective Franchise Owners. We have set training dates for later this month and more news on this in next month's newsletter.  

Some of you will know that when a new Franchise Owner joins us, the term of the agreement is for 5 years which can then be renewed, by mutual consent, for further 5 year periods. It is with much pleasure then that I can advise that 2 of our Franchise Owners have just renewed their agreements with us. Keith Bell (Glasgow) is one of our longest serving Franchise Owners having completed 10 years with us. Keith has now renewed for a further 5 years. Dave Williams (Central London) has been with us the longest of all our Franchise Owners. Dave has now completed 15 years and has also renewed for another 5 years.  

Many thanks to you both for your continued efforts and support

London House News

We have held a number of follow up interviews from the NEC Franchise Show last month and are pleased to say that discussions are progressing and deposit cheques being received from prospective Franchise Owners. We have set some training dates for later this month.  We have also held our Franchise Owners' Conference at the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes. The event gets bigger and better each year and is a great opportunity for our nationwide team to get together and share best practices as well as catch up with friends and colleagues. Our very special thanks go to not only our Franchise Owners but also our guest speakers from Franchise Development Services, UK Global, Chartis, The Federation of Small Businesses and The Martin Cliffe Practice.

London House News

It has been a busy month at London House. Firstly, I am pleased to advise of two new Franchise Owners.

Andrew Beard  joins us from a background as a Senior Insurance and Re-insurance underwriter with considerable international experience. Andrew has taken over the Norwich postcode area from Ted and Linda Witton who have retired. Welcome Andrew. London House Services Norfolk

Also joining us is Graham Stowell who will be covering the Oxford postcode area. Graham is a QA and QC professional with UK and international experience with the Dept. of Health, Glaxo Smith Kline and Siemens. He is also a Director of a currency exchange and trading business. Again, welcome aboard.

London House Services Oxford

As mentioned last month we will be exhibiting at the NEC twice in October. The first event is the National Franchise Exhibition on 5th & 6th (stand number H65) and then we are back at the venue on the 9th and 10th for the Solicitors Group exhibition, LawAutumn NEC (stand number 10). Do please come along and chat to us, we would be delighted to see you.

We have recently attended the annual Credit Services Association conference. The conference had its highest ever attendance and it was great to catch up again with industry peers. A very informative conference from which it became clear that compliance and regulation is becoming ever more prominant in our industry. No bad thing.

Finally, the latest edition of The Score will shortly be arriving at your offices, but is now available on line. I hope you enjoy it.

Focus on......Trace and Discreet Enquiries

When a client has lost contact with a debtor, we are often asked to trace the debtor's whereabouts and then try and investigate what assets they may have without raising their suspicions.

As you will know, trace is one of our areas of expertise and our Franchise Owners are highly skilled in field trace work. We often overcome a number of difficulties in locating people who do not want to be found, but we remain determined and our success rate of c70% confirms our abilities.

When found, we may be asked to investigate the debtor's assets. Obviously, this would normally be their residential property but we also look out for such things as vehicles, other property investments, business interests etc. Where possible we will also seek to gather information from neighbours in an effort to perhaps confirm our thoughts or just provide us with a little snippet of detail. It should be remembered, of course, that there are also occasions when there is no new information or details to find!

London House News

We continue to receive many enquiries from prospective Franchise Owners and we are pleased to advise that two of these now have progressed to the purchase of territories. The new owners are joining us next week for the start of their two week residential training, so more details on this next month when they should be up and running!

At Head Office we are also turning our thoughts to a number of up coming events. We will be exhibiting at the NEC twice in October. The first event is the National Franchise Exhibition on 5th & 6th and then we are back at the venue on the 9th and 10th for the Solicitors Group exhibition, Law Autumn NEC. Again, more details next month but for now if you would like to come along and chat to us at any of these shows then please make a note of the dates.

November will soon be here! That means our annual Franchise Owner conference is rapidly coming around again. We are beginning to put the day together for our team and are looking forward to another great day.

London House News

Our newest Franchise Owner, Carole Hender, has now completed her training and is up and running covering the HR & WR (Hereford & Worcester) postcodes. 

Carole was originally a graphic designer then lecturer.  She has experience of running her own business as company director and most recently has worked on a research project at the University of Worcester. Welcome aboard.

Carole's contact details can be found on her web pages:

 London House Services Hereford and Worcester

We would also like to express our thanks to John and Alison Whitewood of London House Services Taunton. They kindly hosted the first London House Golf Day at the wonderful Weston Super Mare course and the day was a  great success. The day was attended by representatives of London House and clients of our Taunton office. We look forward to many more of these over the coming years.

London House News

Our newest Franchise Owner, John Ginivan, has now completed his training and is up and running covering the RM (Romford) postcodes.

His contact details can be found on his web pages:

London House Services (Romford & Thurrock) Ltd

We have also taken two further deposits for new Franchise Owners and they will be joining us for training in July. More details next month.

You Asked Us

"You seem to be taking on a number of new Franchise Owners lately, how big is the London House UK network now?"

We currently have 36 Franchise Owners who between them cover 60 franchised territories or postcode areas. Our office locations stretch from Glasgow in the North to Exeter in the South West.

London House News

We are delighted to advise that, again, we are in the middle of training our newest Franchise Owner. John Ginivan has taken on the Romford area (RM postcodes) and will be trading as a limited company "London House Services (Romford and Thurrock) Ltd".

John has a BSc (Hons) degree and has been a senior manager in investment banking with many years experience with ABN Amro Bank.  Previously he had spells with Goldman Sachs and Commerzbank.  John is experienced with the full product range including risk and reconciliation. Welcome aboard John.

 London House Services (Romford and Thurrock) Ltd 

Further training courses are also booked in the diary for more new Franchise Owners and we will give more information next month. 

Our South East London Franchise Owners, Chris Metalle and Chris Richards, have expanded their rapidly growing business by merging with the asset recovery business, L and E Receivables. The combined operation will continue to offer asset finance companies quality management of their arrears cases with the added benefit of greater geographical coverage and more advanced systems. Alex Barnetson of L and E has joined the board of LTR as the director responsible for arrears management. We send our best wishes for this new and exciting venture which offers finance houses a service in tracing and negotiating with clients in arrears and recovering the assets, particularly vehicles, from anywhere in the UK if required through the London House network. Press release

Finally, our latest edition of "The Score" will shortly be arriving on your desks. It is available now online by clicking on the link in the left hand column. We hope you enjoy it.

Got You!

Recently one of our Franchise Owners attempted to serve a Court Order on a debtor in his local area. He met the subject at the address provided by the client a couple of times but he insisted he was not the man we were after and was 'sick to the back teeth of people calling round looking for this bloke ......'. He was not a happy man.  Local enquiries suggested it was in fact him but he denied his identity again. 

We informed the client and they decided that as there was strong evidence that it was him, our Manager should letterbox the Order. Unsurprisingly he failed to attend the hearing and a Suspended Committal Order was eventually issued and sent to us for serving.  We did a little more digging and discovered a website page for the man and, handily, a photo that showed that the man we'd peviously met was indeed the right person. Further enquiries revealed that the debtor was a political party candidate in the local elections being held this month.  So our Franchise Owner personally served him at the local polling station!  Priceless.

London House News

As mentioned last month, we attended The Franchise Show at London's Excel Arena during February. This was our fourth year there, and we felt the best yet. We received a good number of enquiries and in our opinion the quality of the interested parties was very high indeed. We have already held a number of follow up interviews and more are booked in the diary.

Outside of the show, we continue to receive enquiries daily from prospective Franchise Owners and from here we have one applicant booked to join us for training in April. More details on this next month.

You asked us

"How many offices do you have now?" 

We currently have 36 individual Franchise Owners who between them cover 63 UK postcode areas. A number of our Managers have added to their original territories and own a number of areas. We have offices extending from Exeter to Glasgow and Swansea to Ipswich, so it's fair to say we have the UK covered! This coverage is one of the reasons our clients choose to use London House. No matter where in the country an instruction is to be carried out, in all but a very small handful of cases it is a London House Franchise Owner that will do the work.

Who do you know?

We were recently instructed by one of our Solicitor clients to obtain a full witness statement. He was pursuing a personal injury claim for his client arising out of a road traffic accident. The independent witness to the accident, where a child was knocked down by a car in which all the occupants appeared to be arguing with each other and not paying attention to the road, needed to be contacted and an appointment made to give her statement. The problem was that she was Somalian and did not speak English very well. Could we help?

Using our extensive network of industry professionals, we were able to source an intepreter quickly and arranged for the witness to be interviewed. At interview our Franchise Owner asked the questions needed to complete the statement which were translated by the interpreter, with the responses translated back to English. Before long the statement was complete and read back in it's entirety to the witness in Somali who confirmed it to be a true reflection of the accident as she saw it.

Our report and statement were returned to the Solicitor who could now pursue the matter for his client. We await the outcome, but London House has again done its job.

London House News

As mentioned last month, we are now pleased to confirm that we have been joined by a further two new Franchise Owners. Both have purchased existing offices from retiring Franchisees.

Liz Collins has joined us as the Franchise Owner for Manchester. Liz is a BSc graduate in criminology and until recently has been working in the NHS and on a voluntary basis at her local prison. Liz has purchased her area from Trevor Williams, who had been with us for 15 years. Liz will cover the Manchester postcode area.

  

Meanwhile, Mark Holmes has joined us as Franchise Owner for Fordingbridge (Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth, Dorset, Salisbury). Mark joins us with all round business experience having been Managing Director of his own distribution company for many years. Mark has bought his area from Jim and John Davies who have decided to spend more time working in their accountancy practice. Mark has a large area and will cover the BH, DT, SP, SO and PO postcodes.

Welcome to you both.

Many thanks to Trevor, Jim and John for their past support and we wish them well for the future.

Finally, the latest edition of The Score was sent out just before Christmas. Please  let us know if you have not received your copy, or please use the link in this blog to access.

London House News

We have now started training for two new Franchise Owners. Full details will be released next month following completion of the training, but our newest recruits will be covering the South East London area and Bolton & Oldham.

We are of course in Conference season and we have attended two this month. The Civil Court Users Association (CCUA) and the London Fraud Forum are both excellent days, full of topical debate, with high quality speakers, informative sessions and up to date information. It is also time well spent in meeting colleagues and peers from the industry to compare notes and network.

London House News

As you read this we are in the process of training another new Franchise Owner.

Julia Bradbury has joined us and will be our Franchise Owner for the Leeds area. Julia is a qualified Accountant with a background of senior managerial experience. Welcome Julia. In addition, further training programmes are now booked for later in the year, and more details about these next month.

Our latest edition of The Score is now out and you can access an on-line copy by clicking on the link in the left hand column. We hope you enjoy it. If you would also like to receive a hardcopy, please let us know.

Finally, we attended this month the Annual CSA Conference in Birmingham. As ever, an excellent conference with good speakers, informative workshops and great networking opportunities.

London House News

Following Mike King joining us last month, we now have 38 Franchise Owners who between them own 48 regional offices and cover 63 postcode territories. A number of our Franchise Owners have more than one territory and cover a range of postcode areas for us. We have offices as far apart as Exeter & Glasgow and provide a full UK coverage.

We are delighted to advise that following a successful tender process we have been appointed to the panel of TLT Solicitors in Bristol. We will be undertaking a variety of instructions on their behalf (the work is already flowing in) but will be focusing predominantly on trace and process serving

Focus on.......Trace & Discreet Investigations

When a client has lost contact with a debtor, we are often asked to trace the debtor's whereabouts and then try and investigate what assets they may have without raising their suspicions.

As you will know, trace is one of our areas of expertise and our Franchise Owners are highly skilled in field trace work. We often overcome a number of difficulties in locating people who do not want to be found, but we remain determined and our success rate of c70% confirms our abilities.

When found, we may be asked to investigate the debtor's assets. Obviously, this would normally be their residential property but we also look out for such things as vehicles, other property investments, business interests etc. Where possible we will also seek to gather information from neighbours in an effort to perhaps confirm our thoughts or just provide us with a little snippet of detail. It should be remembered, of course, that there are also occasions when there is no new information or details to find!

London House News

I am delighted to announce that our newest Franchise Owner is just about to finish his 2 week residential training programme.

Mike King has a background in the design and print industry and more recently as Manager of major UK companies at Senior Executive level responsible for operations and staff in multi-site locations.  

Mike will be our Franchise Owner for the Cheltenham & Gloucester area covering the GL postcodes. Welcome!

We have further training dates scheduled for August and September for more new Franchise Owners.  

It is worth mentioning that all of our Franchise Owners are CRB checked, fully insured, registered for Data Protection , hold a Consumer Credit Licence and are members of the CSA. 

Focus on... Repossessions

London House Franchise Owners undertake many instructions to repossess property. Of course, the national number of properties being repossessed is a general reflection on the economy but we find that our numbers remain fairly constant. We are well versed in properties of all types and undertake both residential and commercial repossessions. We arrive on site and after the bailiff has executed his warrant we take over. Working to a detailed report form we make all the arrangements to ensure the property is suitable for our clients needs. From reading the meters, advising the utility companies, changing locks, securing the windows, clearance, repair etc we organise it all to leave the property safe, hygienic, secure and ready for resale.

Repossession service