ICA powerless to influence unreasonable conduct

The English Institute has criticised a Top 20 firm’s behaviour as ‘legal but not reasonable’ after it refused to hand over a small file of working papers to a six-partner firm to whom it had lost a small business client.

John McBride, senior partner of Sidcup practice McBrides, says in a letter to Accountancy Age (page 11) that the Top 20 firm – which he declined to name – ‘will respond to specific queries but will charge us for this service a “reasonable” fee’.

The institute told McBride that there was nothing it could do about the larger firm’s behaviour, even though it is contrary to the institute’s guide to professional ethics, contained in its handbook. It says that client information should be ‘promptly given’ by a predecessor firm to its successor, and that, ‘unless there is good reason to the contrary, such as a significant amount of work involved, no charge should be made.’

McBride said that the larger firm’s attitude was all the more ‘curious’ because the client had already paid in full for the work carried out by its former accountants.

‘It’s such a petty thing. All you need is a photocopy of a working papers file,’ he said, adding that the file in question was only about five to ten pages long.

McBride called for ‘a better clarification’ of the rules governing the hand-over of clients from one firm to another.