Michelle Thorp, CEO
Other articles (Insolvency Practitioner, March 2021):
- Kevin Hellard, President
- IPA events update
- IPA examinations – entry closing date approaching
- A reminder from the Insolvency Service on filing a report of an approval of an IVA with the Secretary of State
- Guidance for Anti-Money Laundering Supervisors on submitting better quality Suspicious Activity Reports
- Updated Statements of Insolvency Practice
- Vacancy for a Business Development Lead
- Meet a Committee member: Neil Bennett, member of the Regulation and Conduct Committee
- Guest article: Insolvency Practitioners – how to prepare for 2021
Hello everyone. After a trying and rather cold winter, I am looking forward to spring and developments relating to the Government’s timetable for moving out of restrictions.
I am also looking forward to the imminent publication of the second benchmark report on our Volume Provider Regulation (VPR) Scheme. With over two years since the Scheme was implemented, we are pleased with how it is working in practice and the ability that it gives us to target attention to key areas, with 2020’s main points of scrutiny including the review of case failures, and insolvency marketing. Once published, the report will be available on our news and publications page here. There will be simultaneous announcement on the IPA’s Twitter and LinkedIn pages.
We are certainly beginning the new season with a ‘spring’ in our step, as I and many other colleagues are taking part in the ‘Step Forward to End Homelessness’ challenge for Crisis, our Charity of the Year.
The challenge is a simple one – set a target number of steps to achieve in March (Crisis has recommended some amounts based on UK homelessness statistics and projections), and work your way towards them. I am enjoying the challenge and am pleased by the enthusiastic uptake amongst the team at the IPA – the present step counts and money raised show it! Any donations are gratefully received. You can do so and see how we are doing with our steps here.
We are no strangers to this sort of undertaking, having taken part in a similar challenge last July for Crisis, only lasting for two weeks but with 700 km covered by the team!
Crisis will remain our Charity of the Year for 2021/22, in parallel to the extension of our Office Holders’ terms for another year so that they have more of an opportunity to represent the IPA. On that note, thank you very much indeed to all members who responded to the notice of EGM, whether by attending or sending your proxy responses. I was delighted by the high response rate and we are grateful for your approval of our proposals. I have no doubt that our President (Kevin Hellard), Vice-President (Samantha Keen), Deputy Vice-President (Paul Davis) and Immediate Past President (Carrie James) will continue to do us proud.
IPA Learning
Bookings are now open for our new regular training initiative, IPA Learning, delivered in partnership with Insolvency Support Services.
With current developments the profession being so significant and sizeable in number, we have designed this year’s IPA Learning workshops to help our members and their teams to stay on top of the activity and integrate knowledge of it into your practise. We will be covering topics such as the new Breathing Space moratorium, the planned changes to pre-packs and the new SIPs.
On the topic of the SIPs, you will likely be aware of the updates to SIPs 3.2, 7 and 9, which we wrote to members about last week. We have included a recap in this month’s newsletter in case this may be helpful – click here.
Bookings are also open for 28th April’s Annual Conference. I hope you will be able to join us for what looks set to be a well-curated series of interactive talks on all that is going on in insolvency and areas that affect it, such as the political landscape. Read more about this in Kevin’s article this month and in our events update. I hope that we will see you there.
Michelle