Bevan Buckland

Founded in Swansea at the turn of the 20th century, Bevan Buckland is the largest independent accountancy practice in Wales, with five offices and more than 100 staff. The firm has been training chartered accountants since the mid-1980s – including partner Harri Lloyd Davies, who joined the audit team in 2003. It was around five years ago, when he was President of the South Wales Society of Chartered Accountants, that Harri embarked on a ‘passion project’ to make training more accessible for smaller firms and industry businesses in West Wales.

For organisations in places like Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, sending trainees for classroom tuition in Cardiff or Bristol can be costly and time-consuming. And, unlike in England, there is no apprenticeship funding available for ACA trainees in Wales. 

So, in collaboration with ICAEW, Harri and Vanessa Thomas-Parry, Bevan Buckland’s Chief Operating Officer founded the West Wales Training Consortium. “It was about trying to find a way to make it all as cost-effective as possible,” Harri explains. As well as benefiting from a 20% discount on tuition fees, members can take advantage of a blend of remote and classroom learning with tuition provider Kaplan. The consortium is open to businesses from any sector, and there are no joining or membership fees.

As an ICAEW-regulated practice, it’s important for Bevan Buckland to have a steady supply of ACA trainees coming into – and staying with – the firm. Vanessa and her team recruit six new trainees to the graduate programme each year, alongside school leavers and more experienced hires who may be partway through their studies. “We wanted to grow our own talent, and create a student community so that trainees can come together to study, attend courses and support each other,”  she says. “We make sure they’re really well looked after and nurtured for those first three to five years. We don’t want to lose people during that training period – and we want them to stay with us when they do qualify because they’ve grown up with us.”

Lauren Wheeler was one of the first trainees to qualify at Bevan Buckland under the West Wales Training Consortium agreement. She worked part-time for a year while completing a master’s degree in accounting, before joining the graduate programme full-time in September 2019. The idea of working and studying alongside other trainees appealed to her, as did the opportunity to experience a variety of areas before deciding on a specialism. “I liked the idea of there being multiple juniors doing the same exams so I’d have someone to communicate with. I didn’t feel like it was just me on my own doing the studies – I had a lot of peers that I could speak to for advice,” she explains. “When I was working part-time I was in the tax team, and then once I started the graduate programme I was given the opportunity to explore other areas like accounts and audit to see what I liked and how I wanted to progress.”

Before she joined Bevan Buckland, Lauren admits she didn’t know much about the ACA, as she was steered towards alternative qualifications at university. Once she found out more, however, it was a straightforward choice – despite the fact that her master’s gave her fewer exemptions than she would have had for other qualifications. “I didn’t see the benefit in my professional life of not doing the ACA,” she says. “I felt like it was more prestigious. The whole package of the ethics, the professional development skills and thinking about how it all applies to your day-to-day job is what sold it for me.”

While she says she found studying alongside a full-time role challenging, Lauren’s training went smoothly, thanks to her own organisation skills and the flexible, supportive culture at Bevan Buckland. “I think it helped that I came straight from university, so I was in that studying mindset,” she says. “I also benefited from spacing the exams out and only sitting one at a time. That helped keep the work/study balance there, and meant that I never lost momentum.” Having passed every exam first time, she qualified in March 2023 and is now an Associate Executive, working mainly in audit.

Vanessa’s ambition for the West Wales Training Consortium is not only cost-effectiveness, but also regenerating interest in ICAEW trainees. As well as meeting with fellow business leaders to promote the consortium, she goes into universities to help “fly the flag” of the ACA. “I talk about what being a trainee here looks like, and what options there are qualification-wise,” she explains. “I always talk about the ACA and how students need to be looking for opportunities with a professional qualification like the ACA embedded.”

For her, the benefits of the qualification are clear. “As a training manager, it helps me support our trainees more because I’ve got all the information available through the ICAEW employer portal,” she explains. “I find the ACA holds the students more accountable, too. They’ve got to complete the online training file, have their six-monthly reviews and tick off their ethics training and professional development ladders. It’s the whole package in a sensible timeframe.”

For Harri, the ACA is the obvious choice. “Personally, I think it’s a better qualification, and better for people’s long-term careers,” he says. “It teaches you to apply your knowledge in practical situations, rather than just learning from a book.” And with the creation of the West Wales Training Consortium, training ICAEW Chartered Accountants is now a viable option for smaller organisations across the region, ensuring a pipeline of home-grown talent for the future.