My tenure as Chair of STEP’s England and Wales Regional Committee began in January and I would like to thank Rita Bhargava TEP for being such a hard act to follow. January also heralded the arrival of STEP’s new Chief Executive, Mark Walley. Mark has been quick to get his feet under the table and has ambitions to move STEP forward while keeping the organisation true to both its mission and vision.

The last England and Wales committee meeting pinpointed the areas that the committee felt warranted the most attention: raising the profile of TEPs in the public eye; education, career development and networking; educating professionals; and influencing government/policymakers. We are working on a plan to support and input into further work in these areas over the next year.

As detailed in Rita Bhargava’s blog in December, much has been done in recent years to raise the profile of TEPs in the public eye.  STEP’s Communications Team continue their sterling work with the ‘Talk to a TEP’ campaign and public-facing website, advisingfamilies.org, which continues to receive over 1,000 TEP searches a month.

The mammoth job of upgrading the STEP website is underway. The update will include a new member area, and a full site redesign, which should lead to big improvements and help you find exactly what you are looking for. The new site should be with us by January 2020.

The probate fees issue rumbles on. Rita Bhargava and STEP’s Policy Team have been leading the charge. Despite their best efforts, the government was, until very recently, pushing ahead with the Order. With recent political events, however, this is all looking a little less certain than before, and seems unlikely to come in much before the end of the year, and there is some speculation that, due to its unpopularity, it might not happen at all…  You can keep up with developments on the STEP Blog as they happen.

The EU Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) is under consultation by the Treasury.  It is to the credit of our technical and policy team that they have pulled together such a comprehensive response to this consultation, and in addition have organised two roundtables with a number of senior industry practitioners to discuss the impact of the Directive in the UK. Watch this space for updates as they happen.

A hearing for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Inheritance and Intergenerational Fairness was attended by a delegation from STEP in April. This APPG has held a series of hearings, some of which have helped inform recent recommendations in this area from the Office of Tax Simplification (see blog). We are hoping for more fundamental changes in this area, however, and look forward to recommendations from the APPG later this year.

And our Professional Development Team has a number of plans for the next year, not least the introduction of more flexible diplomas, enabling practitioners to tailor their STEP Diploma to better suit their specialisms.

Since joining the England and Wales committee six years ago, I have been constantly in awe of the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes, undertaken by committee members and the Head Office team, a fraction of which I have reported above. It is a pleasure and a privilege to work alongside so many dedicated professionals.

I look forward to updating you with further blog postings during my time as chair.

Denese Molyneux TEP, Chair, STEP England and Wales Regional Committee