Damien Ashford

Since joining the firm in 1998, Damien has specialised in restructuring and performance improvement in the public and private sectors. By 2010 and after secondments as a CFO and into central government, he became solely focused on working with government clients across education, healthcare, councils and more, leading many high profile, complex and sensitive assignments helping government organisations with restructuring and financial improvement.

He became a Partner in 2016 and is the UK firm’s Education Lead and Government and Health Industries Restructuring Leader.

“I was incredibly proud to take on the role as Education Sector lead, a sector I am passionate about both professionally, and personally (with a young son currently at school). I believe we have developed a highly focused and impressive community who provide a broad range of award winning services into the education sector. We work with over a third of all the higher education institutions every year, as well as having a growing presence with many national organisations that are critical to educating children, young adults and mature learners. Our national support includes working with the Office for Students, the Department for Education, Universities Superannuation Scheme, Student Loans Company and many more. More widely, we support private education providers and PE clients with dozens of transactions every year.”

Damien has extensive experience in leading and delivering cost improvement and financial restructuring projects in both the public and private sectors. He began working with government clients a decade ago and applied his private sector background to help government clients with similar challenges. This resulted in a wide variety of work from helping government clients with financial or operational restructuring in Education, central government, national bodies, councils, NHS trusts, charities, universities, MOD etc.

Damien, renowned for a strong focus on project management disciplines and providing innovative solutions to provide the best value for his clients, has also led teams has also undertaken high profile and sensitive work relating to Covid, ranging from Nightingale hospital support, Vaccine PMOs and Cabinet Office surge support, where government clients have needed urgent assistance at a time of crisis to use restructuring as a way of making change quickly to drive a stronger response to Covid.

“We appreciate this is a challenging time for our Education clients, who are operating in a very turbulent environment with continuing uncertainty. We are here to support them through these challenges and provide a critical friend / advice, leveraging the 26,000+ professionals we employ to help solve their problems.”

Damien is a Chartered Accountant, Member of the Association of Business Recovery Professionals and Institute for Turnaround.