Healthcare firm Totally collapses but divisions sold

The Derby-based healthcare firm – which lost the NHS 111 support contract in February this year – has appointed Ernst & Young partners Tim Vance and Sam Woodward as joint administrators after failing to secure bids or strategic investors for the entire firm.
It said that following the appointment, the sale of its selective care and corporate wellbeing subsidiaries, as well as the urgent care division, was completed to rival PHL Group.
'This transaction sees the continued and uninterrupted provision of all services previously delivered by the group,' Totally said.
Totally employed more than 1,400 employees, according to its 2023-2024 annual report.
The group added: 'PHL Group will make separate announcements shortly, including communication with the customers, suppliers and employees of the elective care and urgent care divisions, and the corporate wellbeing business, which are all continuing to provide all services as normal following the transaction.'
The company's failure comes after a difficult past year, with the firm losing the NHS 111 contract worth £13 million and then revealing last month it was facing a potential medical negligence claim related to an incident in January 2018.
At the time, it warned the size of the liability for the claim could be more than the £10 million claim limit on its insurance policy.
It launched a strategic review to look at options, including the sale of subsidiaries 'receiving strategic investment or undertaking some other form of comparable corporate action'.
Shares in the firm plummeted at the time.
On June 6, it announced its intention to appoint administrators after the review had failed to see any 'solvent' offers for parent firm Totally and suspended its shares from trading on London's junior Aim market.
PHL – the buyer of its trading divisions – was launched in 2009 and runs services in the UK and overseas, including integrated urgent care, urgent treatment centres, surgical insourcing, custody healthcare, ADHD services and general practice.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Scottish Sun

3 hours ago

• Scottish Sun

Hobbycraft to close NINE shops today as part of huge restructuring plan – is your local going

See the full list of stores closing below CLOSING TIME Hobbycraft to close NINE shops today as part of huge restructuring plan – is your local going Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) SHOPPERS are running out of time to pick up craft and art essentials from selected stores as a high street chain axes nine outlets. Hobbycraft is closing shops in towns including Bristol, Dunstable, Borehamwood and Basildon today. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 1 Hobbycraft is closing nine shops in a blow to locals Credit: PA The high street favourite is also closing two sites in Essex, one in Gloucestershire, plus another in Kent. The stores closing their doors makeup at least nine Hobbycraft stores that have been earmarked for closure this year. Local customers have been disappointed by the news. Bristol residents describing it as a "shame" on social media. The local store is sure to be missed as another customer said they needed to find another "rainy day activity" referencing the store's numerous crafting goods. Talking about the closure, a Kent-based shopper said: "Oh noooooo it's the only one I go to regularly as the rest are too far away!". Another resident said they would "need therapy" following news of the closure. Closing down sales have been ongoing across the stores, with up to 70% off some items. Here is the full list of stores shutting Canterbury, Kent Basildon, Essex Borehamwood, Hertfordshire Bristol, Imperial Retail Park Dunstable, Bedfordshire Epping Forest, Essex Lakeside Shopping Centre, Essex Cirencester, Gloucestershire Bagshot, Surrey I transformed my boring, old fence using an electric stapler and bargain buys from Hobbycraft and Amazon The closures come as new owner Modella Capital is launching an overhaul of the chain after buying Hobbycraft in August last year. Modella also recently agreed to purchase WHSmith's high street business. The move is set to impact between 72 and 126 jobs. Retail woe Hobbycraft is not the only retailer scaling down operations. Up to 11 Original Factory Shops stores are to set to close this month, including sites across Worcestershire, Durham and Cumbria. And another five stores across Nairn, Market Drayton, Troon, Blairgowrie and Castle Douglas have been put up for sale. Private equity firm Modella bought The Original Factory Shop back in February and has since launched a restructuring effort to renegotiate rents at 88 TOFS stores. You can see the full list of store closures here: Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire - June 26 Perth - June 28 Chester Le Street, County Durham - June 28 Arbroath, Angus - June 28 Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire - June 28 Pershore, Worcestershire - June 28 Normanton, West Yorkshire - June 28 Peterhead, Aberdeenshire - June 28 Shaftesbury, Dorset - June 28 Staveley, Cumbria - July 12 Middlewich - TBC The following stores are also up for sale: Nairn Market Drayton Troon Blairgowrie Castle Douglas RETAIL PAIN IN 2025 The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion. Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April. A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024. Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure. The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year. It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year. Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: "The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025." Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector. "By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020."

Wales Online

5 hours ago

• Wales Online

He left the country after a £50m money-laundering case. Now he has new life in sun

He left the country after a £50m money-laundering case. Now he has new life in sun The money laundering sparked a stranger-than-fiction chain of events involving a lottery winner, student houses and a bomb plot Half Moon Bay, an Auckland suburb where businessman Gregory Candy-Wallace appears to be based A man who ran companies that a court found laundered vast sums of money in Wales and England appears to have started a new life thousands of miles away. New Zealand authorities are "assessing" whether Gregory Candy-Wallace should be disqualified from managing businesses in the country after we informed them he had been operating there. It comes after the 64-year-old Brit settled a legal claim in the UK last year over his having controlled a network of firms that defrauded the taxman, HMRC, of tens of millions of pounds. There was due to be a civil trial at the High Court in London but the National Crime Agency (NCA) reached a settlement with Candy-Wallace and his companies last June, recovering assets worth £5.8m — a fraction of the more than £50m diverted from the taxman. A judge later said the money recovered was "the proceeds of crime". Now WalesOnline can reveal Candy-Wallace — a water polo enthusiast from Sussex whose companies used addresses in Cardiff for the money-laundering scheme — has more recent ventures in Auckland, where he is a majority shareholder in two companies and owns 49% of a third. We obtained court documents from the UK court case listing Candy-Wallace's address as a detached five-bedroom house in a wealthy coastal suburb of Auckland, with an outdoor pool and picturesque views onto the yacht-dotted Half Moon Bay. The home is valued at around £900,000. The Auckland-based firms are FM Group Ltd, which bills itself as a chemical wholesaler; ACM Environmental Services Ltd, an "environmental consultancy service"; and the curiously named 846361 Ltd, which says it is in the business of waterproofing buildings. Article continues below Candy-Wallace was previously a director of another Auckland company, Amoeba Investments Ltd, which classed itself as being in the "rental of residential property" industry. The firm owned a four-bedroom semi-detached house in Yorkshire, England, which the NCA applied for permission to seize before reaching a settlement. Who is Gregory Candy-Wallace? Candy-Wallace does not appear to be active on social media and — barring coverage of his court case — there is little trace of him on the internet. What can be found is mostly tied to his fondness for water polo, from refereeing in the Sussex league in 2013 to winning a tournament in Guam the same year and playing for a club in Dubai in 2022. Members of Sussex's water polo community told us they were puzzled when Candy-Wallace suddenly "disappeared" from the local scene a few years ago without explanation. Records show Candy-Wallace has been linked to civil tax fraud cases in the UK for two decades. One of his companies, described as a former "CD pressing business", was found to be "connected with fraud" as far back as 2006 in the form of invalid invoices. Another civil case dated back to 2005 when firms owned by Candy-Wallace were found to be linked to the "fraudulent evasion" of VAT by what the judge referred to as "the Malaga cell" of an illicit contra-trading network. WalesOnline's interest in his activities was first sparked last year when we investigated a network of "dormant companies" in Wales and England. There was little online to indicate what these firms actually did, beyond brief descriptions on Companies House such as "combined office administrative service activities" and "payroll services". One director, Damien Paton, was said to be a French national born in 1994. But elsewhere on Companies House his year of birth was given as 1960. In both records he was registered to a French address that was not a real place. Another of the directors was Candy-Wallace. One of the addresses used by the network was in Cranbrook Street, in Cardiff's student heartland of Cathays (Image: Conor Gogarty ) When we scanned through the many companies, a cluster of 12 stuck out. All were based at the same terraced house in Cranbrook Street in Cathays, the student heartland of Cardiff. It turned out the home was being used as a fake address for money-laundering. Landlord Nasser Nazemi told us the home started to be bombarded with letters from Companies House in 2017 after businesses had been registered there despite having no connection to the property. "The cheek of it," said Mr Nazemi. "We had to involve a solicitor to protect ourselves and it ended up costing us about £600 in legal fees." The firms in the money-laundering network were controlled by Candy-Wallace, according to the NCA, which said the "organised crime group" diverted away more than £50m of 'pay as you earn' and national insurance payments by "offering outsourcing services to third-party companies but then failing to pay the appropriate sums to HMRC". The funds were initially moved through a complex network of UK bank accounts before mostly ending up in Hong Kong and Taiwan accounts. Why wasn't he prosecuted? After last year's money-laundering settlement, we raised questions over the NCA's decision not to bring a criminal case against Candy-Wallace, particularly given that only a small portion of the £50m was recovered — on top of his decades-long links to tax fraud. As the NCA's own barrister James Laddie KC put it, the money-laundering ring was a 'deliberate and organised' fraud that featured 'inducements to secure clients'. Mr Laddie also said the settlement was a 'formal acknowledgement' that the funds were the proceeds of crime. Mr Justice Julian Knowles also described the funds in this way and said the network was part of "unlawful" payroll and money-laundering schemes. People are regularly imprisoned for fraud involving comparatively tiny sums of money. When we asked the NCA why it would not be bringing criminal proceedings, its spokeswoman said: "Civil recovery investigations are an efficient way to reclaim funds that have been acquired through unlawful conduct, and are not dependent on a criminal conviction." ‌ Jonathan Nuttall (Image: Press Association ) There was a criminal prosecution of one person involved in the network, but not for money-laundering. In 2023 one of Candy-Wallace's associates, Jonathan Nuttall, was jailed for eight years and two months after being found guilty of orchestrating a bomb plot against NCA lawyers. Nuttall had conspired to plant two explosives in London's legal district after becoming upset at the prospect of losing his stately home in Hampshire as assets were being seized in the civil case. The 51-year-old's wife, Amanda Nuttall — who once won £2.4m from her first lottery ticket — agreed to pay £1.4m and give up the stately home as part of the recent settlement. ‌ New Zealand Companies Office is now "assessing" Candy-Wallace's involvement in the Auckland firms. Its investigations team manager Vanessa Cook told us it is looking into whether his past conduct should disqualify him from directing or managing companies in New Zealand. Candy-Wallace and the Auckland companies were approached for comment. The only response we received was from a construction business whose email address was listed as a point of contact for one of Candy-Wallace's companies. The building firm said: "I don't know Mr Candy-Wallace, haven't had any dealings with him, and haven't seen him before." In the UK, registering sham addresses on Companies House has been a longstanding avenue for fraud. There is no requirement for those setting up a company to prove its legitimacy — and for those who actually live at the address, the fraud can ruin their credit rating due to the activity linked to their home. Article continues below The mass-registering of "burner companies" allows gangs to open UK bank accounts for money-laundering. However, later this year ID verification is finally due to become a requirement to start a company — after more than a decade of the system being abused — though experts have warned the scale of change needed will take time. If you know of a story we should be investigating, email us at

BBC News

8 hours ago

• BBC News

Derby man's 400-mile dog walk paused due to heatwave

A Derby man's 400-mile walk is on pause after a heatwave made the endeavour unsafe for his four-legged Edwards, 34, was more than midway through a full-time mission to spread mental health awareness across the towns and villages of the Midlands with his Big Man after setting off from Derby in May on a circular route taking him as far as Shropshire, the warm weather has been relentless, with Danny saying he and his rescue golden retriever Elsie were forced to walk shorter distances and earlier and later than previously with a heatwave officially in force across Derbyshire the walk has been halted for Elsie's safety. He said: "Three and a half years ago I had mental health troubles of my own, and I was in a very dark place. I had people help me, I got through that time and I want to help others."I decided to walk around the Midlands and tell people to talk about their problems."We've done 262 miles so far. We're not giving up, but it's difficult."We have paused the walk, I'm not going to expect Elsie to be walking miles in this heat."We've come back home, we're going to finish the walk locally over the next couple of weeks, and we're going to invite people to join us." The walk has been organised to raise money for three charities close to Mr Edwards's heart - The Burnt Chef Project, which supports mental health in the hospitality industry, Andy's Man Club, which provides free peer-to-peer support groups for men, and Jerry Green Dog Rescue, which helps unwanted dogs find loving said: "This is for the underdogs - the quiet ones, the broken ones, the ones who didn't think they mattered."We are going to get to that finish line, we're just going to do it in a slightly different way."