Practising Certificate for Industry Professional

Hello,

I am an ACCA member and have been working in Finance/Accounting for around 10 years, most recently holding Finance Manager and Financial Controller positions for a range of entities mostly in FCA regulated Financial Services firms with turnovers >£10m. It has always been my goal to move toward a portfolio career as an interim / part time FD or Commercial Director (I have quite a bit of experience in building business models and operations). 

To this end, having a practising certificate would allow me to offer a fuller range of services to any potential clients since whilst statutory accounting services would by no means be my main offer, very early stage / bootstrapped startups can find fees from even small practices expensive whereas I would be able to treat HMRC / CH filings as loss leaders taking a longer term view. I have no appetite for audit. 

I am therefore brainstorming ways to allow me to complete the PCTR requirements. Clearly one option would be to take a full time post at a practice but I am not sure if many practices would want someone with my level of experience as effectivly a trainee? Certainly this would involve a large salary cut for me. Does anybody have experience of taking a part-time role with an approved employer? Would this lengthen the experience timeframe from 2 years PQE?

I plan to write to the ACCA on the topic also, but would like to be able to propose some ideas to them so they can give concrete feedback (hopefully).

Thanks in advance for the help and suggestions, all comments / feedback appreciated (except 'you should have thought of this sooner!' - I am aware but I found it very hard to get a practice job as a graduate as I had no A-Levels...)