This time last year, I reflected on a remarkable year, during which we celebrated our tenth birthday, were recognised as the ‘Best Independent Consultancy Firm’ by Tolley’s 2023 Taxation Award and diversified our service offering to include Patent Box, grants and capital allowances.
2024 has been no different and this year saw the introduction of new rates, rules and procedures for R&D tax relief, as well as an increased compliance environment. These changes and the arising complexity have brought with it opportunity for us to continue to evolve our approach to providing advice, and adding value, to our clients. This year I am grateful for our incredible multi-disciplinary team who have faced these changes head-on and with an unwavering commitment to their clients. Thank you!
We were delighted to welcome new clients and partners alike to ForrestBrown this year, and we remain incredibly excited to learn about their innovation and motivated to support their development and growth. As an innovation incentives consultancy, we now have a toolkit of tax reliefs and funding mechanisms to support them, and this is enabling us to support businesses in new and impactful ways.
This year, to review our year, I have asked five of the ForrestBrown team to share with you their personal highlight:
Strengthening our relationships with large and complex clients
Katy Long CTA CA Associate DirectorThroughout 2024 we have continued to work with a wonderfully diverse range of clients, including an increasing number of large and complex businesses.
A particular highlight was winning a competitive pitch for a billion-pound food manufacturer in the face of competition from several Big 4 accounting firms.
The client undertakes R&D at multiple sites across the UK and it’s been fascinating visiting each of those to really get under the skin of their business and build relationships with key stakeholders.
Alongside supporting with their claim preparation, we have worked closely with them to identify opportunities to gain efficiencies and make improvements to their processes. We’re looking forward to making further strides in 2025.
More external HMRC enquiries successfully resolved than ever before
James Dudbridge LLB Director, FB ConsultingWe’ve seen a flurry of activity across both aspects of our practice – contentious and non-contentious. The latter has seen us draw on our extensive experience of R&D claims, to help several large companies build and establish an approach to their R&D claims in-house. We’ve helped others move from a retrospective to a proactive approach to capturing R&D – where R&D is captured in real time – aligning their approach with the intention behind the new merged scheme, while saving valuable time and resource in the process.
Perhaps our stand-out success though, is the number of companies that have come to us in enquiry, who we’ve been able to help. In almost all cases we have taken forward, we have managed to reach a successful conclusion, whether within the enquiry itself or via other routes including appeal and ADR. Despite the large number of cases we have assessed and taken on, what has underpinned our success has been our unqualified focus on ensuring that each and every case benefits from the right level of time commitment and technical quality.
“As a team, we continually learn from one another and adapt our approach to achieve the best possible outcomes for our clients. Seeing my team evolve and develop as advisers is the highlight of the year for me personally.
Grants offering gathers momentum
Karim Budabuss CEng Director, Grant Advisory2024 enabled us to further embed our grant offer into the market and work with a broad range of clients, including a multinational manufacturer investing £200m in the UK, and a renowned food and beverage company seeking support with its application for the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund. Supporting a business’s grant application takes us close to a business and their future strategy and, when it pays off, it can be incredibly exciting to be part of their success. It’s meaningful work, and great to have such a tangible impact on a business’s evolution.
We continue to draw on the expertise of subject matter experts like Shyla Sudhir, leveraging her location strategy experience to help companies make investment decisions based on the availability of incentives, workforce, and infrastructure.
On the policy front, the year brought with it some welcome certainty, with the government making substantial new funding commitments in the Autumn Budget to the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund and the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, as well as to the aerospace and defence sectors. I look forward to helping our clients make the most of these opportunities in 2025.
Accountant partnerships go from strength to strength
Kelly Oakley CTA Associate DirectorThe number of accountants seeking specialist support from us has continued to increase as the legislative and compliance landscape becomes more complex and greater resource is required to process claims and manage associated risk.
Depending on individual need, we can offer a range of services, including full claim preparation or utilising the technical expertise of our sector specialists to produce case studies or support on an enquiry. Each has seen increased demand this year.
The number of accountants referring multiple clients to us has also risen this year, with one top 50 accounting firm withdrawing their in-house R&D claim preparation service entirely and referring their whole portfolio of R&D clients to us.
We enjoy working with accountants as many of us come from this background ourselves, and it’s a fantastic testament to our team when a high-profile firm wants to work with us. It always makes my day when I hear from one of our partners that we’ve done a great job for their client!
Developing our people through continual learning
Phil Smith CTA Technical LeadThe R&D landscape has evolved significantly over the last two years, underlining the importance of sharing knowledge internally and our commitment to investing in our people. The Learning Lab – ForrestBrown’s internal knowledge-sharing workshop series – has been the perfect vehicle for that in 2024. We’ve run sessions most weeks – both in person and online.
My personal highlight must be no fewer than three sessions with former HMRC inspector, Mark Andrew, as he made sense of the many R&D Tribunal cases we’ve had over the last couple of years. It’s also been great to see so many of our team stepping up to present a Learning Lab for the first time. They’re a fantastic way of sharing insights, which can be taken away and applied to practice.
Looking ahead to 2025
Whether it’s partnering with accountants, supporting multi-billion-pound food manufacturers with their R&D claims, resolving enquiries, applying for grant funding or sharing knowledge, supporting our mission to help innovative businesses grow remains our passion.
We look forward to rising to challenge and working with you all again in 2025.
Happy holidays and a happy new year!