Set appoints chief executive

Leading London family set One Garden Court has radically overhauled its management structure, bringing in a chief executive.

Practice manager Howard Rayner has now been appointed senior clerk, replacing well-regarded Peter Hoskins, who left late last summer although the chambers won't say why.

Former business consultant Nicholas Martin takes on the £60,000-a-year chief executive post and will take charge of the overall direction of the 40-tennant set.

Martin joins from MBM Consulting, which he co-founded in 1989.

The management shake-up has not been achieved without difficulty. The set's joint heads, Eleanor Platt QC and Alison Ball QC, claimed last June that no one had been asked to leave the set and that the changes had the 'cooperation of staff'.

Ball now says that the set needed someone who could offer a broad strategy and work out 'how we ought to organise ourselves and where we ought to be going'.