Prospect PS joins the Institute of Legacy Management as a Corporate Partner

Prospect PS has become a Corporate Partner of the Institute of Legacy Management, the membership body for the people responsible for administering gifts left to charities in wills. The ILM represents more than 760 legacy professionals working in over 400 charities, who between them manage more than £3bn of legacy income a year.

Why the property matters to a legacy

Charities are residuary beneficiaries on a large share of the estates we work on, and the legacy officer is usually the person furthest from the property. They see the estate accounts and the solicitor's updates. They do not see the house, and the house is nearly always the largest single asset in a residuary estate and the slowest to turn into money. When a legacy arrives late, or arrives smaller than the estate accounts suggested it would, the property is where the answer usually sits.

Since 2011 we have inspected, secured, valued, cleared and prepared property for sale on more than 7,000 estates across England and Wales, using our own employed field staff rather than a subcontracted panel. We carry the cost of the work until the estate is in a position to pay, and where an estate turns out to be insolvent we write it off, so there is no cost to the charity or the beneficiaries.

What Prospect brings to the Institute

What we intend to bring to the ILM is the property side of estate administration, explained plainly for legacy professionals. What an executor should be doing on an empty property in the first month. What a valuation file needs to contain to survive an HMRC enquiry. Where the delays in a residuary estate actually come from now that the grant itself arrives in a matter of weeks. And what a legacy officer is entitled to ask the executor's solicitor while the property is still standing empty.

The first session, on 10 September

The first of those is on Thursday 10 September, when David Halliwell presents a 45-minute online session for ILM members, What charities should expect from estate property management in 2026. It is an educational session rather than a pitch. It follows a property through an estate and shows where the value goes missing along the way, then ends with the questions a legacy officer can put to anyone they instruct so that it does not. ILM members can book through the Institute's events calendar. We will be writing for legacy professionals beyond that, running further sessions where a topic warrants one, and we are looking forward to working alongside the Institute's other partners.

David Halliwell, managing director of Prospect PS, said: "Legacy officers are often the last people to find out what is happening to the house, and the first to feel it when something goes wrong. We would like to close that gap. Joining the ILM as a Corporate Partner is a way of putting fifteen years of operational experience on empty estate property in front of the people who carry the consequences of it."

Legacy professionals who would like to talk about a property on a live file, or who have a question they would like covered in a future piece, can reach David at [email protected].