A firm’s unique selling point is its integrity 

Who are you?

How best to introduce DSC Metropolitan? Honestly, I suppose. We’re a small firm advising individuals and owner-managed businesses and a handful of larger private companies with multiple shareholders, but mainly SMEs and their owners.

We’re based in East Sussex but our roots are in London, and our clients are predominantly in the South of England, spreading to the West and the Midlands.

Post Brexit, COVD-19, Ukraine, Gaza, Trump, and pre-Taiwan, and one might say in the dying echoes of Empire, clients do need firm advice. You don’t want to be paying excess tax, but equally you don’t want to be paying too little. The damage caused by enquiries is far more than tax, interest and penalties. Our ethos, how we define integrity, is to let the authorities, statutory, regulatory or HMRC know that we’re your agents, not an agent of theirs. We will deal with these bodies, and in the main we’re talking about HMRC on your behalf, channelling one inspector’s description of us, “honest, polite …. and hardball”.

I front the firm. My experience is on the marketing side having been the sales and marketing partner for a couple of larger firms. Our senior tax partner John Handley is the best accountant I know. Mark Chesham is our VAT partner and Andrew McKenna leads on the heavier enquiries including COP (9). Like John, Mark and Andrew are first class. Robert Cottington is our compliance tax manager, a centre-half, keeping it all together.

With hindsight, DSC Metropolitan has assembled the best advisers I’ve worked with over the years and then asked the question what do the clients want? In my youth, over thirty years ago, I was pitching for some work in the house in Kensington next door to where Freddie Mercury had died the day before. The atmosphere was sombre, a ghoulish glamour. I asked the assembled company if they’d like to know a little about my firm and was answered “are you a chartered accountant? Then get on with it.”

I suppose the message is, it’s about you, and what you want, not about us and what we want to give you. We’ll listen first and if we don’t think we’re what you’re looking for we’ll be honest. But do give me a call on my mobile phone and give me a chance to listen.

Best wishes,

Doug Shanks
07718752577
douglas@dscmetropolitan.com

“We listen first, before expressing our opinion. ”