Holidaysplease on course to ‘financially recover from pandemic’ by year’s end

The announcement came during the homeworking agency’s conference in Daventry on Friday (14 October) – its first since 2019.

"By December/January time, we will have hopefully gotten back to where we were going before Covid, taking just 12 months to recover from what we lost in 21 months," Duncombe told delegates.

He said the brand had two options heading into the pandemic – either "hunker down" and make redundancies, or "go down swinging". 

"We made no redundancies in HQ and tried to support our members as much as possible," he added. "But the result cost us a fortune and drained all of our cash.

"If we were going to come out of this, we were going to come out quickly. Since December 2021, we have seen a steep and accelerated recovery. We didn’t hide and made sure our customers and members came first."

Meanwhile, Dixon said the agency’s sales have "consistently" remained above pre-pandemic levels since spring 2021. "We’ve seen record calendar months every month in 2022 so far," he added.

"We had our biggest departures ever in July and August, with more than £11m recorded in those two months alone.

"No redundancies at HQ meant we could keep supporting our customers and our agents. We couldn’t have done it without you. You took control to secure existing business and went out and found new customers."