DTI launches overhaul of insolvency regime

The insolvency profession is preparing for a major overhaul of its regulatory regime, following the launch of a wide-ranging review led by the Department of Trade and Industry.

The working party, which will have representatives from the seven professional bodies representing insolvency practitioners in England and Wales, had its initial meeting last week and is set to meet at the end of next month to discuss a detailed agenda and its terms of reference.

Anthony Booth, director of professional standards at ACCA, and the institute’s representative on the working party, said the working party was set up on the request of the profession.

‘It’s been ten years since the Insolvency Act was created and we wanted to review the regulation,’ he said, adding that the starting point for the working party was to ask ‘what are the problems?’ faced by the existing regulatory regime.

Topping the agenda for the working party will probably be a host of public interest issues such as trying to harmonise the different disciplinary processes among the professional bodies, including the length of time each organisation takes to deal with public complaints. The working party is expected to produce a set of proposals which will go out for consultation in the next few months.

DTI minister John Taylor announced the formation of the working party last week in the Commons, following a savage attack on the English ICA’s disciplinary complaints by Milton Keynes North-East MP Peter Butler.

Butler, speaking in an adjournment, criticised the institute’s handling of a complaint by two of his constituents against chartered accountant insolvency practitioner AJ Aiyer of the Luton-based firm of Fryer & Co.