The Society of Professional Accountants (formerly the Small Practitioners Association) and the ICAEW’s general practitioners panel are urging the institute’s council not to put forward proposals for a Practice Assurance scheme at the body’s agm in June.
The council will decide whether to go ahead with the scheme – which involves the monitoring and regulating of member practices – at its next meeting on the 5 February next week.
However, the SPA and GPP say the development of the scheme remains ‘far from complete’ and is not ready for approval.
‘There just hasn’t been time to get the detail sorted and we haven’t got a new version of the proposal ready to show to people,’ explains SPA chairman Peter Mitchell. ‘There are a whole range of different processes to be gone through to make sure we end up with an appropriate, and I would hope, highly-polished professional product. Because it’s the ICAEW, that’s what you expect at the end of the day.’
One of the bodies’ main concerns is that because the original proposals for Practice Assurance proved so unacceptable to smaller practitioners, confidence in the scheme at this end of the market is very low. The SPA and GPP are having considerable input into the development of the proposals, and according to Mitchell, have taken on board all the concerns of small practitioners to make it much more acceptable.
‘More time is needed so that small practitioners can hear the better news, and can participate in a programme of trials and pilot studies, to rebuild their confidence and acceptance of such a scheme,’ he says.
The SPA and GPP say an acceptable PA scheme would be ready for approval at the institute’s agm in 2004.
|
|