A Broad Vision

The Price Bailey Story

Peter Pugh

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781848317086
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Contabilidad

This is a book about the 75 years of a very successful accountancy practice.They are 75 important years both in the history of the United Kingdom, encompassing the Second World War and all the recessions and periods of growth in the 60-year period following that war, and in the history of accountancy and how it has had to adapt to both the changes in accounting practices and in accounting technology.As you will see, the Price Bailey story is one of growth from a single partner in one office to 22 partners in seven offices, not only in East Anglia but in the City and West End of London as well as in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Price Bailey, which became a Limited Liability Partnership in 2004, is now the 29th biggest accountancy practice in the country. Its new Managing Director, Martin Clapson, is also Chairman of the European Board of the International Association of Professional Accountants (IAPA).Many people view accountants as a necessary adjunct to their life because the law of the land demands that financial dealings, whether personal or corporate, be properly assessed and recorded and that the correct tax, if any is due, be paid.There is no doubt that Price Bailey has always been meticulous in making sure this work is done properly and in due time. However, it has also always been the practice of the firm to carry out the above in an open and friendly manner and to offer more than the mere adding up of sums. As Richard Price, son of one of the original partners and a very long-serving member of Price Bailey, will tell you in the book, the firm has always made sure that they were close to the clients and often mixed with them socially.As you will also see, Price Bailey, especially in the last twelve years under the leadership of Peter Gillman, has greatly increased the services it can offer. Most recently, it is now authorised to give legal advice.

1

A tough time to start

THE HUNGRY THIRTIES

‘I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOW …’

NO COMPUTERS, NO MOBILES

HAYTERS

THE HUNGRY THIRTIES

The Price Bailey firm of accountants was effectively founded on 2 April 1938 when Leslie Benten opened L.H. Benten & Co. at 6 High Street, Bishop’s Stortford. He moved to 1–3 Market Square on 21 March 1939. Benten was joined by Stanley Price in 1943. Price had been born in Bradford in 1917 but the family moved to Bournemouth when he was eight. Stanley’s father, Clarence, had married Stanley’s mother, Lily. Tragically, Clarence Price was killed in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and Stanley was brought up by his mother who did not marry again. She had been a milliner with her two sisters, Mary and Alice, when they were still in Bradford and opened a milliner’s shop when they moved to Bournemouth. Stanley began work articled to an incorporated accountant. Stanley Price became an Articled Clerk of The Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors paying £250 [£15,000 in today’s money] and signing an agreement on 24 May 1934. There he met his future wife, Barbara, who worked in the practice as a secretary. They moved to Wisbech in north Cambridgeshire where there seemed to be a partnership in prospect for Stanley. However, he did not remain there long and moved to Bishop’s Stortford and joined Leslie Benten.

There were a number of farmers in the Bishop’s Stortford countryside among the first clients of Benten and Price. One of them was Shrubbs Farm owned by the Liddell family who remained with the practice for over 50 years.

It is easy, and perhaps a relief, to forget the tough economic conditions of 1930s Britain and how hard life was for the majority of people. At the beginning of the decade there had been a world depression of unexpected proportions. This had led to massive unemployment and Britain did not escape. Nor was the suffering confined to the industrial areas of the Midlands, the North of England, South Wales and the industrial areas of Scotland. For example in South-East London, Annie Weaving, the 37 year old wife of an unemployed husband, and mother of seven children, collapsed and died while bathing her six-month old twins. She had been struggling to feed her children and her husband and pay the rent on the 48 shillings (£2.40 or about £100 in today’s money) her husband received in benefits. At the inquest the coroner said that, by not eating herself, she had ‘sacrificed her life’ for the sake of her children.

Letter from Leslie Benten to clients on 2 April 1938.

Statisticians of the time divided the 12 million families in Britain into four social grades, classified according to the chief earner or income receiver in each family.

Letter from Leslie Benten to clients notifying them of his move, 21 March 1939.

	Income of chief earner per week	Number of families	Per cent of families
Class A	Over £10 (£550 in today’s money)	635,000	5.2
Class B	£4–£10 (£220–£550)	2,580,000	21.3
Class C	£2 10s–£4 (£137.50–£220)	4,581,000	37.8
Class D	Under £2 10s (£137.50)	4,318,000	35.7

The rich and landed of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs were few and far between!

Life for the middle-class families in Bishop’s Stortford was not as bad as this, of course, but nevertheless, businesses were struggling and every effort had to be made to keep down costs. The upper and middle classes were a very small percentage of the population.

Back at L.H. Benten & Co., the fees and balance sheet at the end of the first year of trading were:

		£
	Fees	1,130
	Postage	15
	Telephone	22
	Printing and stationery	42
	Salaries	289
	Rent	54
	Profit	708
	Balance Sheet
	Motor vehicles	36
	Office furniture	60

We need to multiply the numbers by 60 to arrive at today’s value. It would therefore look something like this:

		£
	Fees	67,800
	Postage	900
	Telephone	1,320
	Printing and stationery	2,520
	Salaries	17,340
	Rent	3,240
	Profit	42,480
	Balance Sheet
	Motor vehicles	2,160
	Office furniture	3,600

‘I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOW …’

The arguments have raged back and forth for more than 60 years over Britain’s preparedness, or lack of it, for war in 1939. In hindsight it is easy to see that a further war with Germany was inevitable, and indeed, the leader of the French army in the First World War, Marshal Foch, described the Treaty of Versailles as merely a twenty-year armistice, a remarkably accurate prediction. However, the spirit of the 1920s and early 1930s was one of peace and goodwill. There had to be a better way to settle men’s differences than the appalling slaughter that had taken place between 1914 and 1918. It was not only national revulsion at this carnage that led the British governments of the 1920s and 1930s to reject the isolated calls for rearmament. There was also a widespread feeling, nurtured by such publications as Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, that Germany had been treated too harshly. And when Hitler began to rant about the injustice of it all, some were inclined to wonder why the Germans scattered around central and eastern Europe should not live under one government. For example, when the German army marched into the demilitarised Rhineland in 1936, Lord Lothian said: ‘Hitler is doing no more than taking over his own back garden.’

Foreign Office Intelligence had changed its mind about Germany’s preparedness for war. Original calculations suggested a date some time in 1942, but in 1936 fresh information indicated that the Germans might be ready as early as January 1939. This was one of the reasons for the rapid signing of contracts for Hurricanes and Spitfires before either had been fully tested

As we now know, Germany did not invade Poland in January 1939 but at the end...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Author’s acknowledgements
• Monetary values
• 1: A tough time to start
• 2: Up and down the A11
• 3: The Swinging Sixties
• 4: Growth continues
• 5: The move into Norfolk
• 6: 50 years and onwards
• 7: Further expansion
• 8: Uncertain times
• 9: We must be in London
• 10: Renewed expansion
• 11: The world’s our oyster
• 12: Where are we now?
• 13: The future
• Appendix 1: Price Bailey Partners
• Appendix 2
• Index
• Copyright