Responsible Financial Officer and Deputy Town Clerk at the town's own council — a past post, long finished. I now keep books, VAT and monthly numbers for St Neots businesses. Published fees from £95 + VAT, on your own Xero or Sage.
Book a free 30-minute review →A town council is a statutory body spending public money, and its Responsible Financial Officer is the named person who has to stand behind the figures. That meant building and defending the annual budget, setting the precept that lands on every band D bill in the town, keeping the ledger in a state where any councillor could query any line at any meeting, preparing the Annual Governance and Accountability Return, then handing it to an internal and an external auditor paid to disagree with you.
For scale, the council's approved 2025/26 budget shows about £2.59m of expenditure against a precept of roughly £2.09m — the current council's published figures, not mine. I left the post years ago: no relationship with the council now, no council clients, no endorsement from anybody there.
The habits are the point. A public body cannot post a journal and hope: every balance is supported by something an outsider can inspect, variance against budget is explained in the month it happens, and a filing date is not negotiable. Owner-managed companies almost never get that treatment.
St Neots is one of Cambridgeshire's larger towns and is both dormitory and producer. The station sits on the East Coast Main Line some 52 miles from King's Cross, Thameslink covering most off-peak services and Great Northern adding peak trains; entries and exits hit roughly 1.08 million in 2024/25. There is no train to Cambridge, which is why the road matters here. About half the resident workforce works locally, and the town's neighbourhood plan evidence base records more small businesses than average, with four employers of over 200 staff accounting for only about 15% of local jobs. Employment land clusters at the A428/A1 junction and along the railway; planning sits with Huntingdonshire District Council.
The industrial side is real. The Cromwell Road Estate, and the Eaton Socon estates off Little End Road, Howard Road and Steel Close, carry light manufacturing, food production and distribution. March May, a pump manufacturer supplying the chemical, pharmaceutical and gas sectors, took roughly 17,500 sq ft at Marston Road on the Cromwell Road Estate, moving off Howard Road; a 19,597 sq ft food production unit nearby sold freehold off a £1.375m guide. Companies that size carry stock, plant and payroll — big-company complexity on a small-company overhead.
Consultants off a London or Cambridge payroll, now invoicing one or two clients. The damage repeats: a director's loan drifting overdrawn with nobody tracking the s455 exposure, dividends voted retrospectively against profit that was not there, home office and mileage claimed on instinct.
Wintringham and Loves Farm 2 hold planning for thousands of homes between them — years of work for groundworkers, roofers and fit-out firms. Three faults recur: CIS suffered never reconciled to the HMRC account, the domestic reverse charge applied to the wrong invoices in both directions, retentions parked in debtors unprovided. See the construction work.
Stock counted annually at invoice cost, nothing off for obsolete lines. Plant on hire purchase posted as operating leases, understating asset and debt alike. Depreciation never checked against resale. Where bills of materials matter, Sage 200 beats migrating.
A commuter trading rhythm — dead at nine, busy at six. In the ledger: mixed VAT rates on one till report, card settlement posted net of fees as the sales figure, cash banked days after it was earned.
Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet is a £1bn scheme: around ten miles of new dual carriageway between the A1 and Cambourne, both junctions rebuilt, due to open in 2027. The published case is roughly ten minutes off a peak journey and over 4,000 vehicles a day off the old road.
Locally that is a working assumption with money attached, not infrastructure news. Sub-contract onto the scheme and you take on main-contractor payment terms, retentions and reverse-charge invoicing at an unfamiliar scale. Run vehicles and the diversions now, and the finished road later, both move your cost per mile. It belongs in a forecast.
Essentials — £95 + VAT monthly: bookkeeping and VAT returns. Essentials + Books — £195 + VAT monthly, adding statutory accounts and the CT600. Managed — £395 + VAT monthly, adding management accounts with commentary. Finance Director — £1,250 + VAT monthly. Fixed, by Direct Debit, confirmed in writing first. No hourly rates, no timesheets, one month's notice either way.
Not offered, by choice: statutory or external audit, which needs a registered audit firm, and specialist tax advice. Detail on the price list, or test your present arrangement with the cost calculator.
No office in St Neots, and the fee reflects that. The work runs on your own software from Northamptonshire, a short run across the A428. Where a conversation is better had face to face — the first one, usually — we come to you.
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA, personally: a Chartered Management Accountant, CIMA Member in Practice, 25 years in finance. Head of Finance roles in pharmaceutical wholesale (£3m growing to £10m), publishing and media (£13m, with an ecommerce arm) and software (£15m) — and before those, the St Neots Town Council post. One named accountant; no junior, no offshore team.
Also covering Eaton Socon, Little Paxton, Buckden, Wyboston and the A1 villages. Nearby: Huntingdon, Bedford, Cambridge, Peterborough, Royston. See everywhere we work.
Seven questions, answered from memory — no logins, no exports. It ends in a straight verdict on whether your numbers would survive being looked at.
Run the free Quick Books Check → Or book a 30-minute review