I know this is a cliché but how
fast has this year gone? With barely two weeks to go until Christmas I am not
sure where this year has gone and being the ultimate Christmas Eve shopper and
Christmas decorator, this year will be no different. I think this year has
flown by even faster than usual because there have been so many changes and
events which have meant there has been little time to have pause for thought.
The business has multiplied in size since this time last year and as Mari
reminded me recently, we were only three at last year's Christmas party, this
year we were 8 but should have been 10 if it were not for illness. We all have
individual and important roles to play within the business and I must take this
opportunity to thank each member of the team for their valued contributions and
hard work in 2012, our dramatic growth would have been impossible without them
and I look forward to their continued support in 2013. It is therefore with
sadness that I must report that Meinir Davies, who joined us in March 2012, is
moving on to pastures new in the New Year. We will all miss her at Agri Advisor
Solicitors and wish her well in her new adventure.
The barns will be finished in
January (I am crossing my fingers as I write this) and I must thank Randell
& Janes and all the contractors that have been working on site for the last
6 months and for making sure that the work progresses towards the deadline.
We had an excellent turn out for
our Succession and Exit Planning event at Pontargothi Hall on Friday 7th
December 2012 in conjunction with LHP Chartered Accountants and Sian Bushell,
Succession Planning Facilitator. If you need assistance with succession
planning please do not hesitate to contact us.
I gave a presentation at a CAP
Reform Conference held in London on 6th December 2012 which discussed the main
points of the reforms currently on the table. Gwilym Jones spoke on behalf of
the Commission and several MEPs were also present to give their views. One
thing is now fairly certain, the reforms for Pillar 1 will not be implemented
by 1 January 2014, that is now even being admitted by the Commission as an
impossibility. Having said that there is reluctance to delay things further
than that and therefore there is considerable pressure on all three European
institutions to come to an agreement sooner rather than later. The same day I
also attended the ADR Mediation Conference in Oxford, and it made me think that
perhaps we could do with sending a couple of mediators to Brussels to resolve
the differences between officers of the various EU institutions! At the
mediation conference, it was emphasised that there would be dramatic changes to
costs recovery and use of mediation further to the Jackson review and that
these were due to commence in April 2013. This will mean that it will be more
difficult to recover costs from the other side if you have not used mediation
but also will mean costs are not normally awarded if the value of the case is
low. This is designed to encourage people to settle disputes as opposed to
litigate them. It will be interesting to see if this works in practice.
May I take this opportunity to
wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
