Big numbers add up to success for accounts firm (From Craven Herald)

Big numbers add up to success for accounts firm

9:33am Friday 6th June 2008 in Dales Folk By John Sheard

One of the bugbears of running a business in modern-day Craven is recruiting and then keeping good staff despite the turmoil in parts of the so-called "financial services industry".

Skipton Building Society and its many subsidiaries had to go first to Lancashire and then to Londonderry in Northern Ireland to attract the right people, whereas in the City of London hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fly-by-night money traders are facing redundancy as the credit crunch bites. Thankfully, my piddling finances have been serviced very well indeed these past 20 years by a business at the other end of the scale in terms of staff numbers - but one which is just celebrating its 100th birthday.

Weston, Whalley and Jackson, based in Skipton, is the oldest accountancy practice in Craven and big numbers, employment wise, seem to be its stock in trade. A century in business is pretty impressive, but even more astounding is the fact that its tiny staff of just three have clocked up some 110 years between them. They are chartered accountant Robin Worthy, who joined back in 1965 and became one of the youngest partners ever in this conservative profession's history, Judy Bowdin, who has been there 39 years, and Lynn Baker, 29 years.

I first met Robin when he came galloping to the Family Sheard's rescue when our youngest joined her brother at university. In those days you got grants if you had two children in higher education, but there was some sort of bureaucratic mix-up and my son's tuition fees were abruptly cancelled. This was a time of intense concern: it looked as though our boy might be "sent down" for some clerical error beyond his control. In desperation, we turned to Robin and he sorted it out in a couple of days.

We have been close friends ever since and that makes my job in writing about him and his staff much more difficult. He only agreed to be interviewed because of the centenary, and mainly wanted to thank Judy and Lynn for all their support over the years. "Don't be too personal," he asked.

At the risk of upsetting him, I can't accede to that request, for Robin Worthy, 68 this week and without any plans for retirement, is a man who went through some struggles that could have come straight from the pages of a Catherine Cookson novel.

The son of a miner from Sunderland, he passed the 11-plus to the local grammar school where he revelled in the academic life. He loved history, can still speak Latin and knows more about the Wars of the Roses and the Plantagenet kings than anyone I have ever met. But it was not going to be easy to put that education to good use.

First, his father became seriously ill with bronchitis and had to leave the pit or face an early grave. Casting round for work, he finally managed to find a job as a gardener on an estate near West Marton. By this time, Robin had left school and been articled to a firm of accountants in Sunderland. The family moved to Craven and Weston, Whalley and Jackson - by far the most influential accountants in the area at the time - agreed to take over those articles while Robin continued his studies by correspondence course.

Then illness struck again - twice. Just before his 21st birthday, Robin was struck down by tuberculosis - in those days a killer - and he ended up for many months in isolation hospital near Grassington. Then his mother went down with the same disease.

Tough Wearsiders, the Worthy family, for not only did they survive these setbacks, but they prospered. Father got a job with Rolls-Royce at Barnoldswick and Robin qualified and was made a partner in the practice at the age of 28. He and his wife, Olive, married in 1970 and have lived in Barnoldswick ever since, raising two daughters.

There have been many changes in the business life of Craven since then - the decline of local retail businesses on Skipton High Street and their replacement with charity shops; the death of small engineering companies; and the helter-skelter ride in farming. Robin Worthy has represented people in all these fields and has no doubt been as helpful to them as he was to me and mine. And although the credit crunch is worrying much of the UK, he is quietly confident about the future here in Craven.

"Dales folk have always been canny with their brass," he reassured me. "The people going bust in London are gamblers who over-stretched themselves. Folk up here have got more sense. We're better placed here than virtually all the big towns and cities." From a man with the nous of Robin Worthy, that is very good to hear.