From the Chairwoman

First of all, may I wish you all a very blessed and prosperous New Year, in spite of our present problems. The light at the end of the tunnel promised by the new vaccines is a huge relief and I hope that by the summer we are able to operate with far fewer restrictions in our daily lives.

However, some things are changed forever, and in particular the new online hearings have demanded a leap forward in technical expertise and coordination with the courts which in my experience so far is not working perfectly by any means, but the principle is welcome and sole practitioners have the advantage of being more flexible than large firms in their administration, so I hope our members can adapt and flourish in this new world order.

And as a wonderful start we must all celebrate and congratulate one of our Law Society Council Members, Lubna Shuja, on the huge achievement of being appointed Deputy Vice President of the Law Society. Lubna has worked tirelessly on behalf of Sole Practitioners for many years in Council, and this is a very well-earned position from which I am sure she will highlight your interests and work towards improved communication and cooperation between our Group and the Society.

In the meantime, and in spite of the pressure of running our own practices in these challenging times, your committee have made progress in developing new ideas and services for our members.

First of all, we have continued with our programme of Webinars for members which have been publicised through emails and retained on our website for you to view at your convenience. This will continue as a valuable service after the pandemic restrictions are finally lifted, to run in parallel and complementary to live meetings on a regional and national basis.

We have decided on a programme of improvement and upgrading of our website, in particular the members area which has been inoperative for technical reasons for too long. The running speed on the site has already been improved, and we expect significant changes before the next edition of SOLO.

After the disappointment of the cancellation of the Malaga conference, we have discussed what best would suit our members for our next live conference. Given the travel and health concerns and expense of a foreign event, it has been decided that our next conference will take place in the UK, hopefully in or within striking distance of the Greater London area, and we are tentatively looking for a booking in October. Of course, this is subject to social distancing and travel restrictions being lifted. We were pleased to receive a full refund of our deposit for the Malaga conference thanks to the efforts of our Conference Coordinator Jennifer Houlihan.

You will see from their reports that our Secretary and Council Member Clive Sutton and Council Member Lubna Shuja have been deeply involved in complex discussions on the number and allocation of council seats, and I am relieved to report that we have retained our existing two for this Group. This is quite an achievement, in the face of proposals including the allocation of our seats to the Small Firms Division and involved many hours of exhausting Zoom meetings and preparation.

I have also been continuing my campaign to force the Ministry of Justice to clarify a nationwide system for the secure delivery of documents to court, especially since we have been forced to use online systems for filing bundles. Birmingham Family Court has recently confirmed that they will accept the Egress Switch encryption system (but no other), but Oxford Court require documents to be loaded directly on to their system, other courts are adopting their own methods, and there is no nationwide policy on this. I am grateful that the National Cyber Security Centre have taken this seriously and arranged meetings for me with them and the Ministry of Justice, the latest on Tuesday 19th January 2021. The importance of this was highlighted in my own practice just after Christmas when a client was harassed by a Daily Mail reporter for details of her divorce – that is just the sort of case where our communication of all our client’s private information in the court papers might be targeted and we must secure our systems as well as possible for our own sake as well as the client’s. None of us want to end up in the dock facing criminal charges under the Data Protection Acts because we had to file documents at court on insecure systems.

Finally, I am delighted to say that in spite of lockdown we have been able to continue and improve our relationship with current and potential sponsors, so that the Group can look forward to a secure financial base for the future. Our principal sponsor Locktons Insurance Brokers have been enormously supportive, not only financially but also in providing information for discussions on SIF and providing best advice to members on insurance problems in the current extremely challenging market.

As I write we are still in lockdown, but I hope that as the vaccination programme rolls out and takes effect, we can look forward to a more normal summer this year, and I look forward to seeing some you in person when we can next have live events safely. In the meantime, stay safe and stay successful in your practices.

Penny Raby SPG Chairwoman 2019 – 2020 pennyraby@harmony-house.co.uk