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Ian Nancollas
Alumni Relations Manager
Alumni Relations Office
University of Bedfordshire
Luton campus
Luton, LU1 3JU
alumni@beds.ac.uk
Monday-Friday 08:30-17:00
+44 (0)1582 489 270
Looking back on his student days in the 70s Phil Rees says: “I had a ball.”
Phil graduated in ’75 with an external degree in Biology from the University of London. Back then Luton was a College of Technology. His proposed career in teaching led him to pursue his studies and gain a PGCE only to encounter an acute shortage of teaching jobs. It was then that fate intervened and the skills he had learnt as the SU treasurer paid off.
As Phil recalls: “Everyone thought I was wasting my time when I took up the sabbatical post of treasurer. But I got to know the auditor and when, later, I was looking around for a job he gave me a start as a clerk in his accountancy firm.” Thirty years on Phil is a qualified accountant running his own business.
Phil became a tax specialist by working for 10 years at Grant Thornton before being made redundant in the early 90s. It was then that he set up his company Phil Rees Associates in Bedford. The similarities with today’s financial climate are not lost on Phil.
But he says: “I’ve never looked back. There is a certain type of person who suits the challenge of working for themselves. I’ve never needed to advertise or run a website. I get my clients through word of mouth and my business is booming”
He specialises in taxation and helps over 100 other small businesses.
Besides his lecturers David Orwin and Ted Eastwood, Phil particularly remembers a young Charles Clarke, then president elect of the NUS, visiting Luton to discuss the SU affiliation to the national body. Charles Clarke MP went on to become Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s cabinet between 2004 and 2006.
Profile added July 2009
