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The A24Group Ltd is a privately owned medical staffing agency that operates in the United Kingdom and South Africa. A24Group manages and places some 26,000 staff, in the UK alone, with healthcare service providers. There are no outside investors or loan capital funds.

The A24Group was founded in 1996 by entrepreneur Penny Streeter OBE, who started the company working with just her mother and co-owner, Marion. All growth has been organic, other than through the acquisition of Nursing Services of South Africa in 2006 and the BNA-related brands in 2008.

In 2010 Arabella Health Staffing Ltd - a wholly-owned subsidiary of the A24Group – acquired BNA, The British Nursing Association, and its associated nursing agency brands Grosvenor Nursing and Mayfair Nurses. Pinnacle Staffing Group Plc, the owner of BNA, accepted consideration in cash of £2,750,000.

Founder, Penny Streeter was awarded the OBE in the 2006 New Years Honours for ‘services to enterprise’ and was the CBI Entrepreneur of the Year, 2003. A24Group has been listed in the Fast Track 100 ‘Fastest Growing UK Companies’ in three years, and was ranked No.1 in 2002.

The Group includes agency brands Ambition24hours, Nursing Services, Locum Services and Arabella Health – which comprises BNA, Grosvenor Nursing and Mayfair Nurses.

A24Group supplies the public and private healthcare sectors with some 100,000+ temporary medical staff weekly – locum doctors, agency nurses, AHPs (Allied Healthcare Professionals) and HCA (Health Care Assistants). This includes general medical and specialist doctors and nurses.

Clients include NHS hospitals and primary care providers, the private health sector, prisons and care homes, insurance and other companies. The agencies provide temporary staff for single shifts and longer term placements, where vacancies may be harder to fill.

Ambition24direct, BNA, Grosvenor Nursing and Mayfair Homecare are home nursing divisions that provide support by healthcare assistants for patients with personal and domestic tasks, and also more specialist care from qualified nurses. This can include nursing on a live-in, 24-hour basis. The agency supports patients and their families with a range of conditions including: eating disorders, geriatric and paediatric care, learning disabilities, mental health nursing,oncology and rehabilitation, including post-operative support.

The A24Group was the first UK medical staffing agency to provide a 24-7 service, 365 days of the year. The provision of ‘last resort’ medical staffing, often at very short notice, remains a prime service feature, to provide cover when a client’s full-time staff are absent. This service is supported by specialist training for consultants and compliance staff, and advanced IT systems (see below).

The A24Group has agencies that operate under the Government Procurement Service agreement – formerly the NHS PASA (Purchasing and Supply Agency), National Agency Nursing & Care Framework. This is usually for longer term staffing assignments, over several weeks or months.

IT investment: over £1.5 million has been invested in the development of specialist IT systems. The group has recruited and trained a dedicated team of 33 in-house developers, designers and support staff. Their task is to continually maximise efficiency and safety in systems for the recruitment, management and selection of medical candidates, ensuring full compliance with the range of professional and Health & Safety requirements.

Enterprise is an IT system that enables agency consultants to instantly identify and select candidate staff who are available for shifts and have required skills – as well as prior experience with the client organisation, wherever possible. Continuity of support for healthcare providers is a priority in selection.

Staffshift is the on-line registration system that enables agency managers to monitor the on-line diaries of availability maintained by candidates. Authorised staff are alerted whenever compliance registrations are due for renewal. As a system safeguard, when a mandatory registration expires without renewal then selection is automatically barred, until compliance is completed and validated.

Awards

Early Life

Born in Zimbabwe in 1967, Penny Streeter left Zimbabwe in 1979 and was educated at Alberton High in Johannesburg until 1983. She left South Africa for the UK at the age of 12 with her mother Marion. She started work in the recruitment sector after leaving school at age 15.

Career

In 1989 Penny Streeter launched her own recruitment business: it failed and she also divorced, which left her homeless and penniless, finding refuge in homeless accommodation with her three young children.

After some years working in other people's recruitment businesses, Streeter tried again in 1995 with a new venture, funded by evenings moonlighting as a children's party entertainer. A24Group was launched in 1996. A24Group is a temporary staffing agency that fulfils the need of a 24-hour staffing service in the nursing sector. Following rapid growth, over the next decade the company expands the service to cover locum doctors, allied health professionals, carers, social workers and teachers / lecturers - and it establishes a national network of UK branch offices.

In 2004, A24Group expanded into South Africa, with ‘back office’ facilities for the UK and SA markets. It also launched an £11 million, three-year investment plan in South Africa, based from 130,000 sq ft (12,000 m2) freehold premises acquired in Cape Town along with initialising SA locum and nursing agency services. 2004 Also marked the launch of domiciliary home care services: private nursing and care assistance was provided directly to people at home for post-operative, geriatric, paediatric and other care.

In 2006, the company made its first major acquisition: that of South African agency NSSA (Nursing Services of South Africa), the largest provider of temporary nursing personnel in the country, supplying over 3,000 staff each month. Also, a second office opened at 50 on Long Street, Cape Town.

In 2009, Nursing Services of the UK and Locum Services of the UK, divisions of NS Health Staffing, was launched. Today A24Group is a multi-million-pound medical staff recruitment and management organisation operating with multiple brands in the United Kingdom and South Africa. Streeter's company has interviewers based nationally throughout the UK and South Africa and employs over 300 office staff across the world, with 27,500 personnel on its books - locum doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, care assistants, teachers and social workers for major institutional service providers throughout the UK and South Africa.

Today, the A24Group operates nationally from its offices:

• Group House, 92-96 Lind Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM1 4PL, England

• Ambition House, 107 Voortrekker Road, Bellville, Cape Town, 7535, South Africa

In 2013 Streeter purchased and is the developer of the Benguela Cove Lagoon Wine Estate, a wine farm and residential estate in South Africa, located on the lagoon at Walker Bay, Hermanus.

This was the beginning of the Benguela Collection.

Streeter purchased Mannings Heath Golf Club in West Sussex in 2016, buying out the majority share from the Exclusive Group.

This was followed in 2017 by her acquisition of Leonardslee Gardens, also in West Sussex.

In October 2018 Streeter opened Restaurant Interlude at Leonardslee House, which won its first Michelin Star in August 2019 under chef Jean Delport, and then developed new hotel accommodation in October 2021.