Public Interest Representation
Building Trust is a key element of the ICAS Strategy "Building a Professional Community". Recognition of the public interest is the primary object of the ICAS Royal Charter, requiring the maintenance of a high standard of efficiency, probity and professional conduct in the interests of the profession and of the public generally. To serve the public interest effectively requires that we retain the confidence of the public in the profession and that we deliver those services that society expects from ICAS members.
Our robust regulatory functions benefit from extensive and high-calibre public interest member representation. Public Interest Members fulfil a non-executive function bringing an external perspective and challenge and encouraging a robust and transparent accountancy profession.
Public interest members also contribute to the governance of ICAS; exercising oversight within the ICAS regulatory functions and ensuring that processes are applied consistently and fairly.
Details of the public interest members on the ICAS regulatory committees are as detailed below.
The Regulation Board
Colin McClatchie FRSE
An experienced Non-Executive Chairman and Director with a developed and eclectic skill-set in corporate governance, risk and reputation management gained within both the public and private sectors.
Matt Smith OBE JP
Matt was Scottish Secretary of UNISON and President of the STUC. He serves on the Scottish Human Rights Commission; the Scottish Standards Commission; the Employment Appeal Tribunal and as a non-executive Director of Scottish Water. He is a Director of Irvine Bay Regeneration Company and of Unity Enterprise. Matt is a Fellow of the SCDI. He sits as a Justice and on the JPAC in North Strathclyde; on the Disciplinary Panel of CIPFA and formerly on the ICAS Discipline and Appeal Panel. He has served on various bodies including the Calman Commission and the McIntosh Commission.
Authorisation Committee
Roy Roxburgh
Roy qualified as a solicitor in 1974 and became partner in Iain Smith & Co in 1977. He remained partner until the commercial department of Iain Smith & Co joined Maclay Murray Spens LLP in 2007. He retired in 2009 but remained a consultant until 2017.
Roy has held a number of positions including Convenor of the Law Society of Scotland’s Insolvency Committee; Vice Convenor of LSSs Company, Insolvency & Banking Committee; LSSs nominee on the Joint Insolvency Committee (until 2017); and moderator for Administration, Receivership & CVA exam paper of JIEB (position held for 10 years).
He was the recipient of the R3 Scotland Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 and sat on the ICAS Investigation Committee until 2016.
Liz McAreavey
Liz has a long history of work in both the public and private sectors. She is currently Commercial Director of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Group and Managing Director of Chamber Developments Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. Prior to this role, she was a Business Development Leader at Ernst & Young having been recruited to develop and deliver their Market Leadership strategy for Scotland and integrate a ""one Scotland"" approach to the region. Prior to 2002, she successfully established a number of businesses each of which she led to a successful exit through a trade sale.
Investigation Committee
Morris Anderson
Morris is a qualified solicitor and notary public. He is a former partner in the firm of Blackwood & Smith, based in Peebles, and was primarily engaged in litigation.
He is a member of the WS Society and a longstanding Council Member of the Law Society of Scotland. His work for the latter has involved him sitting in and convening a number of different committees, including a Client Relations Committee. He was also involved in the consultations which ultimately led to the establishment of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. From 2003 – 2006 he was in the Local Authority and Sheriff Court Panels as a Curator ad litem and Reporting Officer, requiring him to produce relevant written reports.
Bruce Beveridge
Bruce is a solicitor with a varied professional background, including appointments as the Legal Secretary to the Lord President of the Court of Session, and Deputy Keeper of the Registers of Scotland. He has also served as President of the Law Society of Scotland. Most recently, he was Chief Executive of the British Society of Animal Science.
He was a founding member of the CPD Regulatory Committee, before transferring to the Authorisation Committee, where he finished in late 2017.
Donald Ferguson
Donald is a qualified solicitor, currently a partner in the Edinburgh-based firm of Clark Ferguson. He is in charge of the firm’s criminal law and Human Rights department and also supervises all criminal injuries compensation claims, other accident and personal injuries claims and Court of Session cases involving Judicial Review.
He sits as a part-time sheriff, and as a tribunal chair for mental health cases.
Leslie Forsyth
Leslie is an architect, planner and urban designer with experience in practice, consultancy, education and research in the UK and Germany.
Prior to entering academia, he worked in private practice for a number of years and in the voluntary sector for the Community Technical Services Agency Ltd. in Liverpool. In 1997, after eight years in the Lehrstuhl für Städtebau und Landesplanung at RWTH Aachen, he returned to Edinburgh where he was Head of the School of Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art from 2000-11.
He has taught and examined on programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level in architecture and urban design, as well as supervising and examining research degrees, throughout the UK and in Ireland, Germany and Italy. In addition, he has considerable experience of quality assurance and enhancement-led review processes in architecture, art and design.
For the Architects Registration Board, he has been involved in various committees and the prescribed examinations since 2002. He was a founder member and chair of the Architects Professional Examinations Authority Scotland Ltd.
A specialist in urban design with a keen interest in participation and working with communities, he has published regularly on these subjects in the UK and internationally.
Carole Ford
Carole has a background in school education (mostly mathematics), having served as the Head Teacher of Kilmarnock Academy from 1997 to 2011.
She retains an ongoing involvement in education, teaching/tutoring on a part-time basis, and writing textbooks for mathematics. She serves as a Commissioner for the Queen Victoria School in Dunblane and is the Chair of the Scottish Secondary Mathematics Group.
From 2011 to 2018, Ms Ford was the Convener of the Law Society of Scotland’s Regulatory Committee (its first lay convener, having been elected by the other members of the Committee) She was also the Convener of the Disciplinary Sub-Committee of the General Teaching Council Scotland from 2009 to 2011.
Rachel Grant
Rachel has recently retired as the Head of the Corporate Recovery and Insolvency team at Brodies LLP, where she was also a partner. She has specialised in corporate recovery and insolvency law for over 25 years, with extensive experience in director disqualification work, and involvement in several high-profile insolvency cases.
Rachel has been involved with several insolvency committees, including R3’s General Technical Committee and the Scottish Technical Committee (which she chaired for over 10 years). She is a member of the Law Society of Scotland’s Corporate, Banking and Insolvency Committee and also chairs the Law Society Insolvency Accreditation Panel. In 2017, she was appointed by the Lord President of the Court of Session to the Advisory Council on Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers
She is also an accredited mediator.
Ian Jackson
Ian is Director for Scotland for the General Dental Council where he manages the GDC’s activities in Scotland, working with the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government; consumer organisations; patients and members of the public and the dental profession.
Ian's role is to help us better protect UK dental patients by more frequently and effectively engaging with people in Scotland and Scottish healthcare delivery and policy bodies where there are issues of patient protection and regulation.
Ian graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an honours degree in geography. After working for various companies in sales and marketing, he joined BT in 1982 and carried out a variety of roles, latterly as Partnership Director at BT Scotland. Ian was a ministerial nominee on General Teaching Council Scotland until 2012 and was then appointed as a lay member. He chairs the Finance and General Purposes Committee and sits on the Executive Committee. He is a Board Member of Perth College UHI and sits on various local authority committees in Perth and Kinross. He has served as a lay member on school inspections teams with Education Scotland since 1996. Ian was appointed MBE in January 2005 for services to education in Scotland.
Iain McGrory
Iain retired from Grampian Police in 2011, after serving for 35 years. He was head of the Professional Standards Department for 8 years prior to retiring and has continued working in this area.
Between 2011 and 2016 he was a Commissioner of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission and during this period provided consultancy services to the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland and the Scottish Government. He is currently a member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Disciplinary Pool and Quality Assurance Committee, as well as a member of the Cabinet Office Security Vetting Appeals Panel.
David Robinson
An actuary, David Robinson worked for many years for Scottish Provident in senior actuarial and marketing roles, before leaving in 2001 to become Founder and CEO of innovative Edinburgh-based insurer, Bright Grey. David ‘went plural’ in 2006 and since then has held a number of Non-Executive roles. He has been Chairman of insurer, Engage Mutual, Chairman of start-up f-s technology business, Money Dashboard, and NED of Fidem Life (Ukraine). He has also been a Governor of Heriot-Watt University and Chair of its Audit and Risk Committee. He is currently Chair of Trustees of start-up charity, Smalls for All, and is also a founding Director of IMPRESS, the first independent press regulator in the UK.