A British company director has won an appeal against a Financial Services Authority ruling that he was unfit for his job after a tribunal decided he was guilty only of “carelessness”.

The tribunal ruled that Mandeep Panesar, a director of advisory firm Burlington Associates, had made mistakes when he completed an FSA compliance form and had wrongly signed a declaration saying that he had read guidance notes published on the FSA’s website.

But it said his errors were “unfortunate instances of carelessness rather than indications of any lack of honesty or integrity, or of the appropriate competence and capability to perform the function of a director.” It concluded: “We think it extremely unlikely that he will make a similar mistake again.”

Panesar made the errors in his application for “approved person” status with the FSA. The regulator has been taking a tougher approach to enforcing its rules in this area, which are supposed to ensure that people with important jobs in the finance industry have the right skills and experience.

But the appeal tribunal said the compliance procedures it was trying to enforce were “poorly designed” and its guidance “Delphic” – a reference to the mythical oracle that made ambiguous pronouncements.

The FSA rejected Panesar’s application for approval in November last year, deciding that he lacked the competence and capability to understand and comply with its rules. That was because Panesar had started working in an approved person role when his application for FSA consent was still pending.

When Panesar took his case to the tribunal, the FSA made further allegations against him concerning his integrity, competence and alleged misconduct in other cases. But the tribunal ruled that he was “intelligent, articulate, fair-minded, and honest.”

The FSA said it had scrapped the forms that Panesar filled in, moving to an online application process.The tribunal heard the case in September but only recently issued its finding.

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