About the speakers
Alison Cook
Alison Cook is a chartered accountant who qualified with Deloitte and Touche and then working for Baring Brothers, Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank before setting up her own firm 15 year ago.
Although her firm provides generalist accounting and tax services, Alison has a particular interest in the charity sector and prepares accounts and performs Independent Examinations for a number of national charities and many smaller, local ones. Alison is also a trustee of several charities, volunteers with the charity Tax Help for Older People and is a Board member of the ACIE.
She has been a freelance trainer for about 10 years, preparing and delivering seminars and training courses for Business Link, local enterprise agencies and the University of Bedfordshire amongst others.
Salman Anwar 
Salman is an Associate Director within BDO’s Tax Assurance and Risk Management, and Tax Dispute Resolution teams.
He is a former Tax Inspector having trained in HMRC’s Large Business and Fraud Investigation Services Directorates.
Salman has helped clients of all sizes navigate disputes with HMRC including, for example, Code of Practice 8 and 9 cases, cross tax enquiries, voluntary disclosures for individuals and corporates, account freezing orders and national minimum wage enquiries.
Salman also specialises in tax risk consulting and advisory work, specifically with regards to assisting corporates in developing tax policies, governance, controls and process improvements (including the review and development of tax operating models). Salman has considerable experience in the delivery of both Senior Accounting Officer (“SAO”) and Corporate Criminal Offences (“CCO”) projects to a wide range of clients.
Craig Hughes
I am a Tax Director and lead the tax team at Leeds-based firm, Brown Butler Chartered Accountants.
I have developed extensive experience working with small owner-managed businesses to multinational groups.
Much of my work involves advising companies and their shareholders on a wide range of tax issues, including profit extraction, Management Buy Outs, acquisitions and disposals, demergers, groups reorganisations, the Enterprise Investment Scheme, Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, share schemes, and R&D Tax Credits.
Danny Batey
Danny’s career began 25 years ago with the Contributions Agency and then with Employer Compliance at HMRC before moving into private practice.
For the last 20 years he has been a senior consultant within two leading status consultancies. His specialism is defending clients in HMRC IR35 off-payroll and tax status disputes and Danny has defended hundreds of contractors without losing a case.
Alan Kennedy
Alan Kennedy is the founder and MD of Trident Tax. Alan advises individuals, companies and trusts on tax residence and domicile issues, restructuring of businesses, inheritance tax aspects of succession planning and wealth preservation, as well as HMRC investigations under Code of Practice 8 and 9 and voluntary tax disclosures and all types of contentious tax disputes.
Ryan Conlon
Ryan Conlon is a Chartered Tax Adviser and Trust and Estate Practitioner. As a private client specialist, he advises wealthy individuals, families and trustees on inheritance tax, capital gains tax, trust taxation, residence and domicile, and business exit and succession planning.