Changes to new legal form

The OTS and the Charity Commission have outlined several changes to the proposed rules for charitable incorporated organisations in their response to a consultation held last year.
The CIO, which will be a new legal form for charities, is expected to be popular among third sector organisations because it will limit the liability of trustees, but without requiring them to register with Companies House. They will instead be regulated entirely by the Charity Commission.
The new proposals remove a suggestion that CIO trustees should have a lower duty of care than exists at the moment, and will replace a number of minor criminal offences with Charity Commission powers similar to those that currently exist for other charities.
They also include less public disclosure of the details of trustees and members.
The response said that it hoped the new legal form would be introduced by spring 2010.
But it said a decision has not yet been made about whether to introduce the provisions all at once, or to implement them in stages – the latter by allowing new formations first, then conversions later, in order to ensure that the burden on the Charity Commission is not too great.

[from: Third Sector Online 17.9.09]