Shepton Mallet chartered accountants Burton Sweet have appointed Michele Shapland as a private client tax manager and chartered tax advisor.

She re-joins the firm, where she originally trained and qualified, after 10 years with other firms in the area where her work included advising clients in a wide range of tax matters including income tax, inheritance tax, trust tax and estate administration matters.

Her own personal experience has enabled her to help clients dealing with probate matters following the loss of a loved one.

She has also assisted companies and directors with tax planning, company re-organisation and extraction of profits.

Michele says she uses her 30 plus years of tax knowledge and experience to assist each client to meet their tax obligations while working to achieve their aspirations and goals.

She first joined Burton Sweet in 1997 as an accounting technician. She joined the Association of Taxation Technicians in 1999 and in 2001 passed the CIOT exams to become a qualified chartered tax adviser.

Burton Sweet partner Nigel Harris said: "It's great to have Michele back on our team.

"She brings a wealth of tax knowledge and expertise which strengthens our services to personal and business tax clients, and will enable us to expand our specialist support for trusts and estates."

Outside the office she loves being a grandma of five grandchildren. She reads a lot and has volunteered to help at a local nursing home in the town where she lives.

In the last four years she has completed two of her bucket list goals - travelling to New Zealand to visit the places where the Lord of the Rings was filmed and taking the whole family to Lapland to see Father Christmas and the Northern Lights.

She also loves Champagne, which could be to do with the fact that she is French and was born in the Champagne region.