The panel members were Mr Jim Atkins PPNAEA (Honoured) (member panellist acting as the Chairperson for the Tribunal), Mr Noel Hunter OBE (lay panellist) and Mr Neville Pedersen MARLA (Honoured) FNAEA (Honoured) (member panellist). The presenting Case Officer for Propertymark was Mr Hadley James Easterlow and Mr Stone was in attendance accompanied by Mr Richard Roberts, his legal representative.
Allegations
The Tribunal considered the allegations set out in the case summary sent to Mr Neil Stone. It was alleged that Mr Stone had acted in contravention of the requirements of the following Propertymark Conduct and Membership Rules:
- Conduct rule 1.14: Payments out of a Client (Bank) Account
- Conduct rule 1.23: Reconciliation(s) – format and frequency
- Conduct rule 21: Continuing professional development (CPD) rules
Decisions
Mr Stone entered a plea admitting the allegations.
- Conduct rule 1.14: Admitted
- Conduct rule 1.23: Admitted
- Conduct rule 21: Admitted
Mr Stone and his legal representative entered a plea in mitigation.
Sanctions
- Conduct rule 1.14: £1250
- Conduct rule 1.23: £750
- Conduct rule 21: £350
In addition, costs of this hearing of £465.25 were imposed against Mr Stone in favour of Propertymark.
Closing statement
The Tribunal made the following statement:
'We have carefully considered all that we have read and heard. We thank you both for attending today’s Tribunal and Mr Stone’s frank admission of guilt.
There is a long history of non-compliance with our accounting procedures and CPD recording.
Whilst in respect of each year the discrepancies have been rectified and explained, this Association expects its members to deal with and rectify errors of procedure immediately to ensure that there is no repeat of the mistake. The regularity of errors of this kind might normally give us the course to terminate membership, however, the procedures that Mr Stone has put in place including quarterly accounting has led us to conclude that to fine is more appropriate on this occasion.
In view of the recent clean quarterly reports, we direct that the current quarterly financial reports now move to six monthly reports for the next two years and that after that period and four clean reports, this particular method of reporting is no longer considered necessary.'
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The downloadable report shows the full details of the rules involved in this case.
