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

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.

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.

London House News

We are delighted to advise that we are in the middle of training our newest Franchise Owner.
Alistair Howard joins us as the owner of the Liverpool franchise area. 

Alistair is an experienced bank executive at Director level, latterly Director Corporate Banking, Bank of Scotland (part of the Lloyds banking group) in the North West region. His CV includes heading the BoS Real Estate team and all round business banking experience. Alistair is ACIB qualified. I am sure you will all join me in wishing him every success within the London House network.

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

April of course means that St George's Day is here again and as members of The St George's Day Club, we will be attending the celebrations at The Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane with friends and clients of London House. More detail next month.

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.

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 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

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

LHI at The Franchise Show 2011

London House International Ltd are Banking, Legal, Insurance Consultants and Investigators. A specialist in financial & commercial investigations, London House was established in 1995 and now has over 40 offices in the UK and an agency network throughout Europe and other parts of the world.

We provide a comprehensive range of investigative services to a blue chip client base that includes many of the UK's, and overseas, major financial and legal institutions. Our core business is gathering information and providing comprehensive reports to enable our clients to make cost effective decisions and assist them with any appropriate action.

Our range of services includes: • Trace Enquiries • Process Serving • Pre-Repossession Reports • Property Repossessions • Commercial Debt Collection • Surveillance Operations • Fraud Investigations • Discreet Enquiries • Insurance Claims Investigations • Road Traffic Accident Plans & Photographs • Drug & Alcohol Screening


Remember: We'll very please to meet you at Stand 417
Read about us at The Franchise Magazine

Order free tickets for The Franchise Show, Excel London 2011

London House International on StartupTV

StartupTV speaks to Godfrey Lancashire, our Managing Director, about the franchise opportunities London House International has to offer.




Franchise Opportunities

London House news [Jan. '11]

Again this year, in February, we will be exhibiting at The Franchise Show at Londons ExCel Arena.

This will be our third year at the show and further details, including free tickets, can be found on the link within this newsletter.

We are seeing increasing numbers of enquiries from prospective London House Franchisees, and this show gives us an excellent opportunity to further our continued growth.

Godfrey Lancashire

London House news [Dec. '10]

We have now held our annual Franchise Owners' Conference in the wonderful surroundings of Whittlebury Hall, Silverstone. This event grows every year, and this year was no exception. Many of our Franchise Owners joined us (those that could not were completing repossessions, undertaking surveillance, or snow bound!) and we listened to some excellent speakers in the morning who were clients and friends of London House. Our thanks go to Parry & Co Solicitors, Concateno Drug Testing Services, The Credit Services Association, Forensic Vetting and Derek Arden for their support.

The afternoon was given over to London House matters and an opportunity to share best practices and discuss the continued growth of London House.

Of particular note is the award of Franhise Owner of the Year, voted for by the Franchise Owners themselves. This year the award went to Dave Williams of Central London for his continued support and help given to the whole network. Well done Dave, it's very well deserved.

Godfrey Lancashire

Focus on... Tracing - locating gone away debtors and hidden assets

Our strength is our field force of regional managers (Franchise Owners), all of whom are skilled and experienced in the art of tracing. We differ from many traditional agencies in that we do not rely purely on database enquiries... why have a field force and keep them shut away! Our managers always attend at the last known address of the subject and begin their enquiries by speaking to occupiers, neighbours, etc. always discreetly and always within current legislation. We follow the trail, wherever it may lead, and keep going until we have an answer. We are succesful in the majority of cases and there is a certain amount of satisfaction, for us and you, in our finding that person that just didn't want to be found.

London House news [Nov. '10]

As ever, it is a busy time at London House. We have just finished training a new franchise owner (Marc Borgia in East Surrey & Mid Sussex) and we are delighted to say he has successfully passed his exam.

 When a new franchise owner joins us, they visit us at our Head Office for a 2 week residential training programme. This is a very comprehensive course covering all aspects of the work that we do, the Court system, Data Protection, and the law, amongst many other areas. This training culminates in a written exam (which the new franchise owner must pass before we sign them off). In the meantime, we ensure that they have in place the necessary insurances, register for Data Protection, obtain a Consumer Credit Licence and become a member of The Credit Services Association (thereby working to a published Code of Practice).

We are also quickly approaching our annual Franchise Owner Conference which will again be held in the wonderful surroundings of Whittlebury Hall. Each year our franchise owners join us to hear presentations from clients and industry experts, share best practices and keep up to date with developments at London House.

Godfrey Lancashire

Turn your life around with London House

By investing in a London House franchise, Simon Moppett has turned his life around and now has complete control of his work/life balance.

Juggling spending time with his young family while working shifts as a nightclub manager was difficult for Simon Moppett who often came home in the early hours of the morning. Eager to rectify the situation, Simon decided to start his own business and in February launched a London House franchise. Now he is able to spend quality time with his two-year-old son and wife and is on course for a first year turnover in the region of £30,000. 

'I had been a nightclub manager for 16 years,' reflects Simon. 'I really enjoyed the work because I was always on the go and it was a fun environment to work in. However, working split shifts became difficult when I married, because my priorities changed and spending time with my family came first. 

'As I had been in a position of authority for many years I did not want to work for someone else and could not face the structure of a nine-to-five routine. I was drawn to the idea of running my own business and knew the benefits of franchising - so purchased a copy of The Franchise Magazine for inspiration. An advert for commercial investigation franchise London House caught my eye immediately.' 

Established in 1995, London House provides a range of services to banks, law firms, other blue chip organisations and private individuals. Services vary from debt recovery and witness statements to missing persons, fraud investigation and pre-employment screening for drugs and alcohol. The role of the franchise owner is to collate the information requested by the clients and report back to them. 

'I had never done any work like this before,' continues Simon. 'So I knew I would find the work both challenging and stimulating especially as I would be offering clients a variety of financial and investigative services. I met London House founders Godfrey Lancashire and Brian Hughes at their head office and was overwhelmed with their honesty and knowledge of the business. Godfrey and Brian encouraged me to contact existing franchise owners, which I did and they too gave positive and honest feedback. Confident with my decision I went on to launch my franchise which covers Preston, Blackburn and Fylde.' 

As part of the franchise package Simon completed a two-week comprehensive training course conducted by Brian, who also went through the operations manual and gave him on-the-job training. 'I cannot fault the support,' says Simon. 'Someone is always at the end of the phone if I have a problem and I have made friends with several franchise owners. 

'As my own boss, working from home, I now have complete control over my work/life balance, which is great as it means if I want to take a day off I can. I love the fact that the harder I work and more I achieve now the bigger my rewards will be in the future. It is a great incentive. Right now my aim is to continue building up the business in my territory with the intent of taking on a second territory in the next couple of years.' 

Reported by Jess Sturman