Prime Appointments Raises £200,000 for Alzheimer's Society & Wins National Award

Prime Appointments Raises £200,000 for Alzheimer's Society & Wins National Award

Prime Appointments are proud about how the business has developed and progressed since its formation in 1992. Recognition of this was the recent winning of the People’s Choice Award for the Family Business of the year in East Anglia and being National runners-up in this category.

Now everybody at Prime Appointments is excited because it’s founder and Managing Director, Robyn Holmes has been nominated for the Lifetime Achievement award and we will soon find out if she has been successful. This nomination is recognition of Robyn’s drive and dedication in developing the business that she loves. Several of Prime’s clients have worked with us for nearly 30 years, which is testament to the consistently excellent service Prime delivers. We credit this to Robyn's hugely positive energy and infectious passion for recruitment; she has a genuine interest in how other businesses work and loves connecting people with people. Robyn invests hugely in her team and recognises that training and development together with a happy work environment are the reason that we continue to grow. Her open, honest and positive personality means that she is a real inspiration to everyone she meets, often instilling self-belief and energy to help staff and others outside of work achieve their goals.

Robyn founded the recruitment agency in 1992 with her best friend Margaret Locke. Together they were instrumental in building the business in the early years. However, in 2008 Margaret was tragically diagnosed with Alzheimer’s which meant she had to leave the business shortly after. Since then, the business has continued to flourish and in 2016 we moved to a purpose-built new office in Witham which is just up the road from the original office on Newland Street. The company is now run as a family business with Robyn’s son Jack, and daughter Katie helping to shape the business for the future. Recently a new office has been opened in Bury St Edmunds to service our clients in Suffolk.

Margaret’s illness inspired Robyn and the team at Prime Appointments to start fund raising for the Alzheimer’s Society. We chose the Alzheimer’s Society because of the charities commitment to not only helping those affected by the disease but also, importantly, no one else was doing more research work to ultimately try and find a cure for the disease than the Alzheimer’s Society.

Prime’s fundraising began in 2018 with an initial target of £10,000. This was reached quickly so the bar was raised to £100,000. Everybody within the company helped with the fundraising through raffles, cake bake sales, memory walks, a skydive, an annual golf day and this year a group ran the Colchester half-marathon. Despite COVID the fundraising continued and by 2022 with the support of many generous people we had achieved our £100,000 goal. The Alzheimer’s Society have continued with their pioneering work to help to find a cure for this terrible disease and this in part inspired Prime to continue their own fundraising for them; so, the bar was raised again to £250,000. Now in August 2023, we are delighted to be able to announce that in just 5 years we have now already raised more than £200,000. The efforts won’t stop here and soon we will have our annual memory walk and in 2024 Prime Director, Jack O’Brien will run the London Marathon to raise further funds.

Recently the Alzheimer’s Society has been at the forefront of research to find a cure for the disease. There is now hope on the horizon and there has been some fabulous news with the announcement about two drugs which will slow down the progression of the disease. In the last year, we have been told about the drugs Lecanemab and Donanemab, which can slow down the decline in memory and thinking skills of people living with early Alzheimer’s disease. Donanemab is a disease-modifying treatment. This means that rather than not only relieving the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, it tackles one of the root causes. Donanemab slowed how fast memory and thinking get worse by more than 20%. The evidence from the trial suggests that the earlier in the disease the treatment was given, the greater the benefit. This means that there was more slowing in memory and thinking decline in people with fewer changes in their brains associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The latest research may only partially be able to help the 900,000 plus dementia sufferers in the UK but it offers genuine hope for those diagnosed early going forward.

Please support us in our pledge to continue to raise funds for the Alzheimer’s Society and whatever you can donate will be so worthwhile in our bid to eliminate this cruel disease.

Please donate here; https://www.justgiving.com/team/together-in-the-fight