OSCR Board papers informing the development of Meeting the Charity Test Guidance and Rolling Review Pilot and Phase 1a

1.  In July 2007, OSCR published its first decisions under the Rolling Review programme. In November 2008 OSCR published a revised and updated version of Meeting the Charity test guidance, together with a report on a further 30 Decisions under the Rolling Review programme. Both the 2007 and 2008 reports contain summaries of the individual cases considered but neither of the reports contain all the working papers which were available to the Board . The revised guidance together with the reports are available on the OSCR web site.

 

2.  OSCR has also  published the consultation documents and summaries of responses for the first and the revised versions of the Meeting the Chairty Test guidance, and the Rolling Review programme. These were among the documents considered by the Board and staff.

 

3.  OSCR is now publishing all the internal documents which OSCR’s Board considered when developing the Meeting the Charity Test guidance (the original and the revised guidance) and various matters relating to Rolling Review, including issues of  timing and communications .  In accordance with the principles of Freedom of Information, the documents are released in full.

 

4.  The documents fall into 2 groups :

 

 

 

What the documentation shows:

 

5.1  The information provided shows how the OSCR Board and senior staff have developed the first version and then the revised version of the Meeting the Charity Test guidance, part of which deals with the issue of possible unduly restrictive conditions on accessing the benefit a charity provides.

 

5.2  In addition, the papers have been released which relate to the Rolling Review Pilot ( s published in July 2007) and Phase 1a (as published in October 2008)   Both in the Pilot and in Phase 1a a number of fee charging charities were assessed, and the papers show the development of our assessment practice and policy relating to such charities.  In a few instances information relating to the assessment of individual charities was provided to the OSCR Board for illustrative purposes. This information was provided prior to the conclusion of the decision making process and it is important to note that it does not necessarily represent the final decisions in those cases.  

 

5.3  The  papers show the development of policy and principles over a period of some 18 months. The definitive guide to the charity test now appears in Meeting the Charity Test Guidance which, together with  the Rolling Review report published in November 2008, sets out OSCR’s policy and principles as now agreed and in place.