Islington Solicitors

1. Review your financial controls at appropriate intervals and do so critically, keeping them up to date. Just because you have not been a victim of fraud, do not assume that it will never happen;
2. Segregate duties – do not allow one or two people to be in charge of all aspects of your charity’s financial controls without any checks being made;
3. Make sure all of the separate parts of the financial records agree with each other. Always ask for and keep receipts. Reconciling bank statements with invoices, receipts, purchase and payment authorisations will often help to identify fraud at an early stage, and may discourage potential fraudsters;
4. Never weaken your financial security for the sake of short cutting or time saving. For example, do not pre-sign blank cheques, even if a second signature is required. Doing so reduces your cheque security by 50 per cent –or, to put it another way, doubles the risk;
5. Keep lists or registers of valuable fixed assets and key charity property, and periodically inspect them;
6. Ensure that electronic or online banking arrangements are secure and are protected with dual-level authorisation;
7. When recruiting staff – especially those who handle the charity’s finances – make appropriate background checks and take up references;
8. If your charity makes grants to beneficiaries or other organisations, carry out appropriate due diligence checks on applicants. Guidance on this can be found at  ‘know your beneficiaries’;
9. Ensure that as trustees you receive and consider regular reporting information about the charity’s finances. If you are a trustee or manager, make sure that you understand the financial summaries and reports that are presented to you, and if you do not, ASK for an explanation that you CAN understand; and
10. If you suspect or become aware of fraud, make sure that you know what to do and who to inform. Make sure it is part of the culture of your charity. Prompt and appropriate action will help to protect your charity and limit any financial damage.

When a family is being housed, the provision of separate, self-contained flats with no common living areas does not mean that accommodation had been made available such that the members of the applicant’s family could ‘reside together’ in the ordinary meaning of the phrase. 

Keeping company records up to date is not always a top priority for the directors of smaller companies. However, failing to keep the shareholders’ register up to date can have a downside if a share transfer has occurred but the new owner’s name is not entered into the register of members.

The number of businesses in the UK which are suffering from ‘significant’ or ‘critical’ financial problems on the first quarter of 2011 has risen to 186,000, according to a report by insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor. This is an increase of 26 per cent over the figure for the third quarter of 2010 and is 15 per cent more than the same quarter in 2010.

For advice on managing your trade risk, contact us.

There has, since its inception, been a great deal of confusion regarding the ‘double Inheritance Tax (IHT) nil rate band’ legislation – whereby the unused proportion of the IHT nil rate band of the first of a couple to die is passed to the second: this is termed the ‘transferable nil rate band’ (TRNB).

• been domiciled for IHT purposes in the UK at the date of death; and
• not have owned foreign assets (i.e. a holiday home) worth more than £100,000 at the date of death.

Not many prosecutions are brought under the Consumer Protection From Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which are designed to protect consumers form the activities of unscrupulous traders.

The laws against corrupt practice in the USA are both strong and pervasive, as a recent case illustrates.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has published guidance for employers and those in the recruitment sector on the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (AWR), which come into force on 1 October 2011.

• the scope of the AWR;
• qualifying for equal treatment;
• how to identify basic working and employment conditions and the relevance of a ‘comparator’;
• pay;
• working time and holiday entitlement;
• pregnant workers and new mothers;
• pay between assignments;
• information, liability and remedies;
• information a Temporary Work Agency (TWA) must have before supplying an agency worker; and
• compliance information required by a TWA from a hirer.

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