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Hello my name is John and I am the J T Thomas in the "& Co".
I have been the sole principal of this firm from its inception
in 1981. At that time I had recently moved from Manchester and
a background of larger firms back to my homeland in Wales.
Luckily our home in Criccieth was on High Street and when I established
the firm from nothing, our front room became my office. To start
with, we had very few clients and so my wife Fran could take some
time away from our baby son Max to act as my receptionist and,
in those days "typist". Slowly my reputation spread and I was soon
able to employ a full time secretary with the clients who were
coming in.
By and by and through organic growth we acquired more clients
and more children as our daughter Amy was born in1983. The business
was now expanding quite strongly with client numbers increasing
and employees to match. Amy was starting to walk and so the house
at 70 High Street seemed to be shrinking. We moved the family out
in 1984 and the building is our office in Criccieth to this day
almost a quarter of a century since we first arrived.
In 1995 we spread our wings from the immediate area of Eifionydd
to the North Wales coast. Jerry Gallienne had established his firm
in Llandudno at about the same time as I had and had a similar
large firm background and training. He had decided that he needed
to be somewhere where he could devote more of his time to his consuming
passions of salmon fishing and mountaineering and decided on Scotland.
He sold the practice to me and, after a period as a consultant
with us he went off to consummate his passion.
Over time we have endeavoured to provide a professional level
of accountancy service to Gwynedd/Conwy area. Our staff fall into
two categories being those we train and those who join us after
being trained. Our firm trains local people usually straight from
school and generally speaking they stay with us until they qualify
in their chosen qualification. Others join us from other firms
or when moving to the area. So far we have one chartered accountant,
one chartered certified accountant, a graduate in management and
several technicians under our belt and the process is ongoing.
Every member of staff is continuously trained no matter what their
level.
The areas surrounding the two offices are quite different with
respect to the people and their micro-economies, they provide everyone
with satisfying contrasts when moving between offices. The A55
expressway makes our journeys quick and pleasurable (not in summer
perhaps!) and has made the servicing of two offices over two quite
distinct and geographically separated areas relatively easy.
Now we have several staff in both offices who I am glad to say
generally stay with us for a long time. They have their own specialisms
and each function is departmentalised enabling the concentration
of our knowledge base.
Oh and Max and Amy? Well yes. Max is a CA working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers
in Auckland and Amy is an associate with Ernst & Young in Manchester,
hoping to become a Scottish CA!
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