The North West accountancy and payroll group has now appeared in the national rankings for six consecutive years, rising from 50th to 34th over the past three
WARRINGTON, UK. July 30th, 2026 – Caroola Accountancy has been ranked 34th in The Sunday Times Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers 2026, up from 40th last year. It is the sixth consecutive year the firm has appeared in the rankings, which are compiled by High Fliers Research and assess employers on the creation of new apprenticeships, diversity of their programmes and successful completion rates.
The ranking places Caroola, a specialist accountancy provider headquartered in Blackpool and Warrington, above a number of significantly larger organisations including the Bank of England, NHS, Lloyds Banking Group, Capita and NatWest. Within its own sector, the firm ranked ahead of accountancy practices Wescotts, Menzies, Monahans, Azets and PKF Francis Clark.
Caroola’s trajectory within the rankings has been consistently upward. The firm entered the Top 100 in 2021, reached 50th by 2023, climbed to 40th in 2025 and now sits at 34th.
Much of the improvement in Caroola’s ranking can be traced directly to the work of Katie Wild, Accountancy Academy Manager, who built the firm’s dedicated in-house Academy from the ground up after its founding in September 2023 at the Warrington office. Under Wild’s leadership, the Academy has supported over 30 accountancy learners across AAT, ATT and ACCA qualifications through five cohorts, achieving an average first-time pass rate of over 80%. That figure sits more than 15 percentage points above the national apprenticeship achievement rate of 65.4% reported by the Department for Education for the 2024/25 academic year.
Wild and her team have also built a clear progression pathway within the business. Several members of the Academy’s original first cohort have already reached qualified Accountant positions at Caroola, a turnaround that typically takes significantly longer at other firms. Recruitment is now open for a sixth cohort, expected to start in late summer 2026.
The Sunday Times recognition is the latest in a series of developments for the Group under Managing Director Paul Goodwin. In March 2026, Caroola Accountancy became the first UK accountancy firm to offer extended opening hours until 7pm. The firm holds an ‘Excellent’ Trustpilot rating of 4.8 across more than 6,400 verified reviews, and recently introduced a fully digital sign-up journey that saw online conversion rates more than double. Goodwin has described the firm’s consistent investment in its people as central to every other measure of growth the business has achieved.
With over 300 employees and a client base concentrated in London, the Group operates across accountancy, payroll and employment services under brands including SJD Accountancy, Nixon Williams, First Freelance, ClearSky Accounting, Parasol and baa accounting.
Wild, who has overseen the Academy since its inception, described the ranking as a reflection of a deliberate long-term strategy rather than a single initiative. “When we set up the Academy in 2023, the goal was never just to train people and hope for the best,” she said. “It was to build a genuine career pathway, from apprentice to qualified accountant, inside this business. The fact that we are now seeing our first cohort reach those qualified roles tells me the model is working.”
She pointed to the 80% first-time pass rate as evidence that the Academy’s approach, which combines formal qualifications with structured on-the-job training and regular monthly development sessions, is producing results that go beyond what most apprenticeship programmes deliver. “The national average is 65%. We are at 80%. That gap does not happen by accident. It is the result of the environment our Team Leaders Katie Rodgers and Simon Millington have built, and the culture across the wider business that supports it.”
Asked about ranking above the Bank of England and NHS, Wild was measured. “Those are enormous organisations doing important work with apprenticeships. What it tells me is that the quality of what we are delivering at Caroola is genuinely world class, regardless of the size of the business. That is something every person involved in this programme should feel proud of.”
