ICAEW Council members last month voted to keep redundancy and other district society restructuring costs confidential.

Council chairman John Anderson said it was 'vital to discuss in a confidential session' a report on local infrastructure costs. The Council voted in favour of changing the meeting's agenda so that the report was not discussed in front of public observers and the press.

The report is thought to contain details of redundancy payments for those district society employees who will lose their jobs in July when the ICAEW opens its 10 new regional centres. It is also thought to include the cost of dilapidation payments for soon-to-be-defunct district society buildings, and various implementation costs.

Council ordered the report at its last session in February after Baroness Noakes and other Council members discovered that the Institute did not know how much it had spent to date on implementing the new regional infrastructure.

The ICAEW has launched a new Institute Members in Scotland group in response to Scottish members' requests for local representation. The new service will offer networking opportunities and meet training needs on a local basis for the estimated 2,000 ICAEW members based in Scotland. Assistant finance director of Lothian Health, Shelah Dutta, is its first chairman.

ICAEW president Graham Ward dismissed suggestions that the IMS launch was a reaction to last year's decision by some Big Five firms to train their students with the Scottish Institute. 'It is right and proper that the ICAEW moves forward on a regional basis,' he said.