Nicholas Peter William Skinnard

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Nicholas Peter William Skinnard, a sole practitioner and COLP/COFA at Blight Broad & Skinnard, operated a long-standing loan system involving improper payments, inter-ledger transfers and loans of client/estate funds between unrelated matters, largely without the knowledge or consent of executors or beneficiaries and providing an impermissible banking facility. He used £83,748.39 of client money to pay a personal tax bill and then repaid it from another unrelated estate. He also gave inaccurate information to beneficiaries (falsely stating probate had been granted and that payments would be sent) and delayed paying legacies. The Tribunal found all allegations proved, including express findings of dishonesty on allegations 1.1-1.4, 1.5.3, 1.5.4, 1.6 and 1.7 applying the Ivey test. He was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £39,173. No exceptional circumstances were found to justify a lesser sanction.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Act in the client's best interests
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No own-interest conflict
• No conflict between current clients
• Segregate client money
• No improper use of client money

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty alleged and proved
• Gross breach of trust in misusing funds from estates of deceased clients
• Misconduct continued over a long period (focus on a three-year period)
• Personal benefit derived from the loan system, including repaying his personal tax bill from client funds
• Very high culpability as sole practitioner with direct control and responsibility
• Harm to individual and charitable beneficiaries kept out of their bequests; estate money risked in unsecured/undocumented loans
• Lack of genuine insight - continued to blame the rules (particularly Rule 14.5) rather than his own conduct

Mitigating factors:

• Reduced the shortages to some extent when the FIO drew them to his attention
• Early admissions save for dishonesty allegations
• No previous disciplinary matters / good regulatory record
• Repaid the personal tax loan before the intervention