Springfield Healthcare Group

Our Client

Springfield Healthcare Group has delivered health and social care services in Yorkshire for over 50 years and is chaired by founder and former chief executive Graeme Lee. Beginning with a family-owned care home in Garforth, West Yorkshire in 1967, Graeme continued his parents’ legacy and grew the group to include six award-winning, purpose-built Yorkshire care villages before their sale to a US investment trust in 2024.

The group, which also has a domiciliary care division, is now on a new expansion journey. It’s creating two new care villages to join the original 69-bed Springfield Care Home for residential, respite and early-stage dementia care. The first involves a £15m transformation in 2025 of a grade two listed building in Harrogate into a 70-bed care home with an additional 24 spacious flats and 8 houses and a unique intergenerational focus in the community. The second, with 85 beds and 8 houses, will be built on Wetherby’s Mercure Hotel site in partnership with Lidl.

Our Challenge

Back in 2011, the growth of this longstanding family business required a more holistic approach to managing its group finances. In the years that followed, Graeme’s successful vision to transform care facilities in Yorkshire involved complexities that commanded a thorough grasp of the group’s history and all financial moving parts. Graeme also needed his accounting provider to understand the imminent growth strategy as well as to manage all aspects of tax and audit.

The business sought a right-fit comprehensive advisory service that would not only provide counsel and expertise on tax structure (before and after the injection of external funding for the first of six care villages), but one that could also manage year end audit, accounts and tax compliance for each of the villages as the business gradually grew. Graeme sought a like-minded accounting partner who could understand every segment of the group and the implications of every decision on those different operations.

In short, a solid financial base was necessary to scale the care village part of the group’s wider business. As well as accounting expertise, Graeme also sought counsel on growth, cashflow, and insight on maximising the tax upsides and minimising tax liabilities.

Our Solution

This has been an ever-changing journey of success, adaptability and, most of all, close long-term partnership. At every commercial turn, AAB has proven its strategic understanding of this evolving group.  Advising on a group of care villages that grew from zero to over £30m turnover in 14 years – not on a linear or straightforward path – AAB has provided essential flexibility and a thorough knowledge of the history and complexities of the wider £50m turnover. AAB’s role as trusted advisor and supporter has grown significantly and led the Springfield Healthcare Group team through a range of challenging, complex situations around governance, cashflow, payroll and much more.

AAB went on to manage audits, tax and accounts for all six villages – in all stages of their evolution. The remit was expanded to advise on and manage comprehensive tax planning and due diligence ahead of their eventual sale in 2024. This included preparing over 12 sets of accounts and project-managing the delivery of these within extremely tight timeframes.

AAB’s current focus is advising on and developing an optimal tax structure for the new group: the two new care villages in Harrogate and Wetherby, and the original Springfield Care Home in Garforth. AAB will undertake audit, tax and accounts work for all three entities. The team’s longstanding knowledge of the group’s financial operations is an invaluable asset here to Graeme and his senior team.

As a result of this strong relationship and quality of counsel and collaboration, AAB was also taken on to advise and manage accounts and tax for three property companies in Graeme’s portfolio as well as for a growing healthcare recruitment firm run by his son.

In addition, and again testament to AAB’s deep commercial understanding across the entire group, the team has provided the audit service for Graeme’s separate domiciliary care company for 14 years.

Our Impact

Not only has AAB’s role with Springfield Healthcare Group grown extensively over the period since 2011, so has its impact. The team’s financial expertise across all the different businesses, their different challenges and segments, and the implications of every decision on every other part of the group, have been instrumental in cementing Graeme’s trust and confidence.

“I see AAB as a partner. I know that they’ll always be there by my side to support what I need and that is very valuable to me, especially now as we go again to expand the group. Their advice has played a big part in our credibility and in our reputation as a solid, honourable, legitimate business offering quality care.”

“They listen hard to my blue-sky thinking and my plans and always have been a valuable sounding board about possible risks and implications. They’ve believed in me and my vision from the start and always articulate exactly what we need to do to realise my plans.”

Graeme values AAB’s deep knowledge of all aspects of the group’s business, describing AAB as exactly the right sized company with the right fit and the right people. Particularly important to him is the local connection and cultural synergy between the two firms and the fact that AAB played a solid part in securing initial investment from equity investor BGF back in 2012, when the group became the first Yorkshire business that BGF had ever invested in.

 

“It was the start of a big journey that AAB has supported me on all the way through and they continue to do so. AAB knows all my businesses. They understand us and have consistently helped to shape our growth, which has involved advising and auditing businesses with a £50m turnover across the whole group. It’s a key selling point for me that they’ve been on the whole journey, including all the operational challenges we faced during the pandemic.”