Numerica's Southampton practice is experiencing the energising effects of girl power as it boosts its team with a series of new appointments.

Since the well-established local practice became part of the Numerica Group earlier in the summer, the tax department has gone from strength to strength, allowing the team to become much more proactive and focused on developing their specialist talents for the benefit of the practice's growing client base.

Head of tax and compliance in Southampton, Tracy Jenkins, explains: "The sheer increased volume of work across the firm over the last 12 months, together with far greater demand for more specialist and integrated services has meant that we needed to expand - and fast. Now that we have a core team of five managing the whole tax division, we can have a much more structured approach, with more time to focus on specialist tax issues and proactively developing our services to meet the needs of our existing and potential new clients.''

Tracy's new team consists of Lynn Chamberlain, Alison Duthie, Lisa Baxter, Rona Atkinson and Simon Wilkes, giving the department a distinctly female bias. But, as Tracy says: "It's great, we all get along well together. Everyone has their particular area of responsibility and there's a great team spirit.''

Lynn leads the personal tax department of six specialists, Alison manages the corporate tax department of four, while Lisa, Rona and Simon support Tracy in offering both personal and corporate clients a wide range of consultancy services. The practice's corporate tax department was the first specialist development.

Tracy says: "It soon became clear that to be really effective, we needed dedicated resources to develop our specialist capabilities.

"When Alison took over as head of corporate tax, it was as the result of a conscious resourcing initiative to give us the skills, time and capability to focus on specific areas, identify opportunities and effectively exploit them.

"Today, each member of the team is responsible for identifying new opportunities and targeting both existing and potential clients to help the practice to continue to grow.

"We can serve our clients better now and provide new ideas to help them plan more effectively for the future."

It's an approach that is already proving beneficial to clients, with the recent launch of a Home A Loan scheme, aimed at clients looking to achieve effective inheritance tax planning. Similar issue-specific advice is available from the team on a wide range of topics, from share incentive schemes, mergers and acquisitions and end of year planning. "And," says Tracy Jenkins, "of course, we have the extensive knowledge and support of the Numerica Group to call on. We can leverage these skills for the benefit of our local clients, which is a great opportunity for everyone!"