Section 172 Statement
Last updated March 2026
Stakeholder engagement and promoting the success of Old Mill
Each of the Directors is mindful of their duties under section 172 (s172) to run the group for the benefit of its shareholders, and in doing so, to take into account the long-term impact of any decisions on stakeholder relationships and the impact of its activities on its reputation for high standards of business conducted. This statement addresses the ways in which we as a Board deliver on this responsibility.
Clients
The Old Mill Group continues to provide a comprehensive range of services, offering our clients a “one stop shop” for their accountancy, audit, outsourcing, pensions, tax and wealth management advice.
Investment remains a key part of being able to maintain and enhance service levels to our clients. During the period, we continued the roll out of Silverfin which was mentioned in last year’s report. This is a cloud platform which helps automate and improve processes used to prepare and complete working papers, financial statements, corporation tax and management reports. We also began a programme to invest in our Financial Planning back office system, Curo. This investment, and accompanying upgrades, will modernise the system, reducing risk and making it easier for our employees to service our clients.
Our Business Development and Marketing team also have a major role to play when it comes to engagement with our clients. During the period to 30 October 2025, they helped publish a wide range of articles and case studies to help promote to clients (and prospective clients) the high levels of expertise within Old Mill Group and the wide range of services we offer.
Examples of articles published during the period include:
– Tax planning opportunities when selling shares in a trading business,
– Stamp duty land tax charges,
– Milk (dairy) Cost of production report, 2025,
– A promotion brochure for our Corporate Finance services,
– Pre-budget financial planning actions to consider taking,
– Linking business plans to financial planning.
Employees
The expertise, commitment, loyalty and dedication of our people are the single most important driver of our long term, sustainable success. Accordingly, we are firmly committed to ensuring equal opportunities and equal access to career development for everyone who works for the Old Mill Group. To help support our ambition for greater diversity and inclusion, during the period we launched a new Leadership bursary programme open for women working in the Old Mill Group.
We are proud that life in the Old Mill Group is heavily influenced by our core values of Open-minded, Passionate and Lovely to work with. Indeed, both our recruitment and employee appraisal processes include strong links to our values.
We continue to invest in training and development in order to support the career aspirations of our people. Some of the headline statistics from the period in respect of this include:
During the period we also launched a new Leadership Development Programme. The first 12 participants have been selected from across the Old Mill Group, with their programme initially expected to run for two years. They recently attended the first module of the programme and have been assigned mentors from the leadership team to help support their leadership development in role, alongside the formal programme sessions.
Ongoing engagement remains hugely important, with regular team social events, ranging from low-key, such as local team lunches and rounders matches, right up to our annual Christmas parties. Following the successful reintroduction of an All Firm away day last year, we ran a similar session in September 2025. With a theme of “Growth”, it proved to be an extremely popular event, giving all our employees an opportunity to spend time out of the business with their colleagues, learning more about Old Mill’s future strategy and business priorities. Following last year’s event, we’ve seen a marked improvement in employee engagement scores and a stronger sense of positivity throughout the organisation.
We have also continued to promote the Wellbeing of our people. During the period, activities included:
– Stress Awareness Month in April,
– Mental Health Awareness Week in May,
– Cycle to Work Day in August,
– World Mental Health Day and World Menopause Day, both in October.
We continue to hold quarterly presentations for all employees, which is an opportunity to update them on business performance, strategic initiatives and year-to-date financial results.
Shareholders
Alongside our Employee Engagement, for the accounting period to 30 October 2025 we also had a comprehensive programme for Shareholder engagement. During the period this included both informal meetings via MS Teams and more formal, face to face meetings in our offices to brief Shareholders on key operational and strategic matters.
Our internal management accounts and KPIs were also shared with all shareholders every month during the period.
Suppliers
We are committed to treating our suppliers in the same way that we like our own clients to treat members of the Old Mill Group. In particular, we operate a system of twice-monthly supplier payment runs to ensure invoices are paid on a timely basis. This is particularly important for all the small, local businesses that supply Old Mill.
Community
As a group firmly rooted in the South West, links with our local community are vitally important to us, and indeed, many of our employees and clients regularly socialise together away from work, for example at charity events.
We frequently undertake events to support local charities (for example, sponsored cake sales), and also provide support and sponsorship to local clubs, charities and events, such as Young Farmers groups.
Charitable causes supported during the period included:
– Wear it Pink Day (Breast cancer awareness),
– Wear it Green Day (Mental health awareness),
– Love Musgrove (Taunton hospital),
– Exeter hospice support- Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital dementia ward,
– Rotary club Yeovil,
– Milborne Port AmDram society.
We have also continued to be active in the wider professional community. Highlights over the period include:
– Ranked 47 in the Accountancy Age 50+50 top Accounting firms 2024,
– Ranked 46 in the Accountancy 75 Firms Survey 2024,
– Finalists in Accountancy Excellence Awards 2025 for Best Audit Team,
– Top 100 Apprentice Employers – Position 72,
– Ranked in FT Adviser Top 100 Firms 2024 & 2025,
– Ranked CityWire New Model Adviser Top 100 2024,
– Finalists in the Personal Finance Society Awards 2024.
The environment
We are committed to improving our carbon footprint. For example, our Wells Office is fitted with solar panels, and we have now completed the replacement of the lighting in our Yeovil office (our largest premises) with more energy efficient LED units. In addition, every office is fully equipped with a range of recycling bins as well as video conferencing equipment to help to reduce the need for physical travel for meetings where possible.
We also operate a cycle to work scheme for our employees.
