I left the charity Yorkshire Air Ambulance just before Covid-19 hit. I am still working with them to complete the year-end, preparing for the end-of-year audit and liaising with the new finance director to ease the transition, which is working really well.
I was director of finance at Yorkshire Air Ambulance. It has two helicopters, one stationed in the north of Yorkshire and one just outside Wakefield, covering the whole county. Between them, they can get anywhere in Yorkshire within 20 minutes, which can save a life. A lot of people don’t realise that the air ambulances are funded entirely by donations.
As part of the senior management team at Yorkshire Air Ambulance, I spent my time writing reports, reviewing performance against budget, planning and attending meetings, dealing with insurance, banking and auditors, and having regular operational discussions with the team and trustee board.
I am now head of finance at Conexus Healthcare, a confederation of general medical practices in Wakefield, Yorkshire. I am working from home at present and can only meet my new colleagues on screen; I haven’t actually met many in the flesh, which is strange.
The GP confederation is very different from Yorkshire Air Ambulance. The company is a very small, providing support services for all the general medical practices in Wakefield, and I work closely with the chief operating officer and the managing director.
Our core purpose is to deliver primary-care-at-scale services. We invest in training and development and enhance the work of the GP practices, taking away responsibility for some of their administration. This enables them to achieve savings, making management and administration improvements that individually they can’t achieve.
The Covid-19 situation has diverted everything, and it is very difficult to predict what is going to happen up to the end of the year. Things are anything but normal. Resources have to be mobilised very quickly for what might happen, and budgets have to be very flexible.
My advice to those starting out in an accountancy career is to recognise that achieving the ACCA Qualification is just the beginning. Studying with ACCA offers knowledge and understanding, support with career opportunities, networking, and access to help and advice. In terms of my own career, it has given me the ability to work in the private, not-for-profit and public sectors. It is important to me to have worked in different sectors with very different objectives. I am really proud I have done that.
Away from work, I have a VW campervan and I like to travel around the country. I have been all over.
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