Software program agency belonging to Tory donor Frank Hester pays out £50m dividend

[ad_1] The software program firm belonging to the Tory donor Frank Hester, a serious contractor to the NHS, has paid a £50m dividend after gross sales and earnings surged.

TPP Group, which was based by Hester in 1997 as The Phoenix Partnership, specialises in healthcare expertise and offers its SystmOne software program to the NHS. The corporate says it's utilized by 7,800 NHS organisations, together with greater than 2,600 GP practices and a 3rd of acute psychological well being trusts, with 61m digital well being information saved in its database. It has additionally expanded overseas, together with to China, the Center East and the Caribbean.

The corporate, which is owned by Hester and based mostly in Leeds, had a turnover of £97.1m within the 12 months to 31 March 2025, up 13% on the earlier 12 months. It made pre-tax earnings of £47.4m, up sharply from £17.4m, in keeping with the newest annual accounts filed with Firms Home.

TPP paid a dividend of £50m in the newest 12 months, up from £7m in 2024 and £10m in 2023. Hester stepped down as a director of TPP in September however stays the bulk proprietor with 75% or extra of the shares. The corporate paid him a wage of £520,000 within the 12 months to March 2025, the identical as within the earlier 12 months.

The filings, which have been first reported by the Occasions, additionally present the corporate donated £10.2m to the Conservative social gathering within the 12 months to 31 March 2024.

Hester and his firm have made donations of greater than £20m to the Tories because the begin of 2023, the Electoral Fee’s register reveals. The Phoenix Partnership donated a complete of £15.3m, whereas Hester made a £5m donation within the second quarter of 2023.

He was on the centre of a political storm in March 2024 after the Guardian revealed he informed colleagues at his healthcare firm in 2019 that taking a look at Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black feminine MP, made you “wish to hate all black ladies” and that she “must be shot”. Abbott mentioned it was “horrifying” to listen to of the remarks.

After the remarks have been revealed, TPP issued an announcement saying Hester accepted “that he was impolite about Diane Abbott in a personal assembly a number of years in the past however his criticism had nothing to do together with her gender nor color of pores and skin”. The assertion mentioned he abhorred racism, “not least as a result of he skilled it because the little one of Irish immigrants within the Seventies”.

As a key provider to the NHS, TPP has obtained £591m from public contracts since 2016, in keeping with invoicing knowledge compiled by Tussell, which tracks UK public sector spending. This consists of £281.7m from the Division of Well being and Social Care, £56.1m from NHS England, £17.2m from Central and North West London NHS basis belief, and the remaining from NHS trusts throughout the nation.

Hester labored within the monetary sector as a pc programmer for a number of years earlier than beginning the corporate. Working the NHS contractor has helped the 59-year-old amass a private fortune value £415m, in keeping with the 2024 Sunday Occasions wealthy listing, and earned him an OBE for providers to healthcare in 2015.

The TPP web site states Hester wished to take away the executive burden from his now former spouse, a household physician, so she may concentrate on delivering look after her sufferers.

By his personal estimates, the corporate was value £1bn in 2019 and he threw a “unicorn social gathering” at his mansion close to Leeds to have fun reaching this milestone, full with horses dressed up with horns.

TTP has been contacted for remark.

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