Our apprenticeship programmes provide a direct route into a career in accountancy from college or university. They are ideal for students who thrive in a working environment whilst studying to achieve an industry recognised qualification.
If you choose a general accountancy route, you will initially study the AAT qualification in one or more of our main corporate teams. Your work experience will be broad, exposing you to bookkeeping, processing payments, updating cash books, preparation of VAT and corporate tax returns and audit work. Once you have completed your AAT qualification, you will generally settle into a specific corporate team and will have the opportunity to progress on to the ACA qualification.
If you choose an alternative route such as Private Client Tax, you will be supported in achieving different qualifications outside of our apprenticeship programmes. Please refer to the ‘Professional Development Programmes’ section for further information.
Our apprenticeship programmes aim to provide our colleagues with the technical knowledge, skills and work experience to build managers and partners for the future.
You will be provided with a generous study package that will support your attendance of in-person tuition at local centres to aid your success in qualifying exams. Partnered with internal training, regular reviews, other student support, highly-experienced managers and dedicated training assistance, your learning experience will provide you with the necessary tools to succeed.
Once qualified, your professional development can continue further though our other training interventions.
To progress through our apprenticeship applications students should have a grade 6 (grade B) or above in GCSE Maths and English. For the ACA programme, students should be predicted or achieved a degree classification of 2:1 or above, in any discipline. For other entry requirements, please review the job specification on the vacancies page.
Apprentice FAQs
We welcome applicants from any degree discipline. However, it’s important to demonstrate an understanding of the role that you are applying for and show a clear interest in it.
The work you do will depend on the department you are based in. We offer ACA training programmes within audit, private client tax, business tax, trust accounting and wealth reporting disciplines. Whatever role you take, it will be hands on right from the beginning and you will be given the opportunity to work on technically challenging pieces of work.
Our ACA training roles follow the industry standard duration of three years. You will be provided with a fixed term contract and students are supported to complete all elements of the ACA training programme within this time. Once you are qualified, your employment with us will continue beyond this if you have been offered and accepted an alternative role, which we very much hope will be the case.
Our AAT training roles follow the industry standard duration of 2 years. The first 4-5 months you will spend completing a Level 3 Bookkeeping qualification. On successful completion of Level 3, students will progress onto the Level 4 Accounting Technician qualification.
Many trainees complete the examinations in 18 months and then spend a further six months consolidating the final elements required under the apprenticeship programme.
Over the course of three years, you will spend approximately a third of your time at college undertaking workshops, tuition, revision and exams. This will be in the form of 'chunks' of time; so you may, for example, be in college for a consecutive three week period. You will usually know your college programme at least three months in advance so that you can plan other time around it.
Many trainees will complete the examinations in approximately 2.5 years and then spend a further six months consolidating the final elements required under the apprenticeship programme.
You do not need to have work experience that is directly related to the role, however, as we receive a large number of applications, any relevant or interesting work experience will make your application stand out.
We recognise that sometimes things do not go according to plan and as a general rule, we do not terminate the employment of our students after one failed attempt. Where a student has shown adequate effort to prepare for the exam and has consistently shown attributes we believe will support a successful career with us, we will work with students in retaking an exam.