Company Profile

Act Now grew out of two individuals, Paul Simpkins & Ibrahim Hasan who believed they had a product that people wanted. Good quality training about Data Protection that was informative but also fun. Both have extensive experience within the sector and training is based in reality and uses simple language to explain the complex legal issues.

Their first courses were for other training providers in the late 1990's and in 2002 they formed Act Now Training Ltd. The first business plan was simple. Market and deliver 6 courses during 2003. The actual number delivered was 14. In time they developed other courses in associated legislation and the 2004 plan was for 12 to 18 courses and eventually they delivered 45. During these years of rapid growth they also took on other speakers and broadened the range of courses.  They also branched into training for schools. In 2007 and 2008 it is planned to offer about 100 courses.

Along the way they have won tenders for training with the Northern Ireland Civil Service, organised major conferences on Freedom Of Information with nationally recognised speakers and acquired premises and staff, chaired conferences and spoken at many events in the UK and in Europe. They also source trainers for organisations who hold the training in-house; they have published over 20 quarterly newsletters and have written and published nearly 100 articles on information related issues.

Both the directors regularly speak on Information issues and Ibrahim Hasan is a prolific writer on the subject for professional journals and has recently started a regular podcast on information issues. Paul Simpkins has spoken at international conferences in Italy and Greece and is a visiting lecturer at De Montfort University on Data Protection and Privacy. Both directors run their own consultancies in addition to Act Now Training.

A recent addition is a series of courses for schools - Data Protection & Freedom of Information and also Child Protection law.

The name? We're not quite sure how it came about, but we do remember walking along Grays Inn Road one day in the late nineties thinking about what domain name we should buy. DataProtectionActNow.com was considered but we ended up with plain old Act Now. Occasionally some advertising agency uses the phrase Act Now - Norwich Union have, the FSA have and we're sure others will.

We think it's time for you to act with regard to training in this area. In fact you should Act Now