Changes to charity law after the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023

Legislation was laid in the Scottish Parliament on 23 February 2024 to bring into effect (or ‘commence’) some of the changes contained in the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023. This legislation aims to modify certain aspects of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 (the 2005 Act) and update them.

The first changes took effect from 1 April 2024, with further measures introduced in October 2024 and the remaining changes coming into force from mid 2025. Any relevant guidance on our website will be updated accordingly as the changes come into effect.

Upcoming changes

From this summer, all charities need to be aware of three changes that will affect them. The changes relate to:

Providing trustee details to OSCR and the publication of trustee names
Publication of all charity accounts
Automatic disqualification

See the sections below for the key facts you’ll need to know to be able to comply with new charity law.

Providing trustee details to OSCR and the publication of trustee names

Charity trustees are the individuals responsible for the overall control and management of a charity. They may be referred to in your charity as directors or committee members, but legally, they are recognised as ‘charity trustees’.

Starting in summer 2025, OSCR will require charities to submit the following details for each charity trustee:

Name
Home address
Email address
Telephone number
Date of birth
Date of appointment as a charity trustee

All charities should:

make sure all your charity trustees know about this change.
gather the required information about all your charity’s trustees.
make sure that those individuals who will enter data onto the OSCR Online system on behalf of the charity (charity users) have applied for a username and password to access OSCR Online. Each charity can have up to 3 charity users.

These details will be kept securely and used by OSCR to help us regulate charities more effectively and to contact trustees where we need to.

The first and last name of each charity trustee will be published on the Scottish Charity Register from the end of 2025. This will enhance transparency and public trust, allowing donors, funders, and the public to see who is responsible for governing each charity. Individual trustees will be able to apply for their name not to be published. OSCR grants an exemption to a small number of individuals who are able to prove that publication of their name is likely to affect the safety or security of any person or premises. OSCR will provide more details of how the application process will work when data collection begins.

Publication of all charity accounts

Each year, all charities registered in Scotland must submit their accounts to OSCR, which include:

Annual accounts
A Trustees’ Annual Report
An external scrutiny report

The accounting, reporting and notification requirements charities have been following will remain unchanged. Please continue to submit your annual return to OSCR at your usual time.

From the end of 2025, the annual returns from every Scottish charity submitted will appear next to the charity’s entry on the public Scottish Charity Register. Each annual return submitted after the Law is introduced will be visible for 5 years. These documents will be published in exactly the same format as they have been sent, and OSCR will no longer delete any personal information from these documents prior to publication.

All charities should:

consider what information to include in your accounts before drafting them. Some personal data is required by the legislation, such as the names of charity trustees (unless an exemption has been granted by OSCR). However, you may want to consider if it is appropriate to include the names and images of other volunteers or beneficiaries.
make sure your accounts can easily be displayed online, with a PDF document being the most preferable option.
consider adding digital or typed signatures, rather than handwritten.
make sure that submitted information is accurate and on time.

This change benefits both charities and the public. By publishing annual reports and accounts, charities can demonstrate their financial stewardship, transparency, and effectiveness.

Donors, funders, and the wider public will have easy access to those published accounts and any other documents submitted by charities.
If you need support with charity accounting, please read the charity accounting guidance on our website.

Automatic disqualification

Currently, the 2005 Act sets out criteria that automatically disqualify a person from being a charity trustee. The changes expand existing criteria in two ways:

Firstly, it expands the range of criteria that result in automatic disqualification. Newly introduced criteria include convictions for terrorism, money laundering, bribery, and perverting the course of justice.

Secondly, the criteria now relate to people undertaking a senior management function for a charity. This includes any person undertaking work of a senior nature, which may or may not be reflected in their job title. It will also include volunteers who undertake a senior management function.

Individuals will be responsible for checking whether they meet any of the criteria that result in automatic disqualification.

OSCR has the power to waive automatic disqualification in only very specific circumstances.

Currently you are automatically disqualified from being a charity trustee if:

you have a conviction for an offence involving dishonesty
are disqualified as a company director
have an undischarged bankruptcy or protected trust deed or
have been removed as a trustee by the Court.

The criteria now also includes:

conviction of offences under bribery legislation
conviction under proceeds of crime legislation
conviction for perverting the course of justice
a conviction of terrorism or association with proscribed terrorist group
misconduct or negligence as a public official
disobedience with an order of court and
sexual offences subject to notification

All charities should:

Determine who within your charity is undertaking a senior management function.
Confirm with trustees and those undertaking a senior management function that they don’t meet any of the criteria for automatic disqualification.

Changes already in effect

Removing charities that fail to submit accounts and to respond to OSCR

The 2023 Act gives OSCR the power to remove charities from the Scottish Charity Register that have failed to submit accounts on time and failed to engage with OSCR about putting this breach of trustee duties right.

Every year, charities must submit accounts to OSCR within 9 months of their financial year end, and if they fail to do this OSCR, members of the public and potential beneficiaries and donors cannot be assured that those charities are effectively using charity resources for charitable purposes.

You can find details of charities at risk of removal from the Scottish Charity Register here.

If you advise or work with any of these charities, please bring this notification to the attention of the charity trustees.

Where any of these charities re-engage with OSCR we will expect them to bring their reporting up to date in order to maintain their registration. Where we don’t hear from these charities, we will proceed to remove them in line with the process set out in the 2023 Act.

Increased inquiry powers

Part of OSCR’s role is to conduct inquiries into a charity when we identify that there is possible misconduct or a risk to assets.

From 1 April 2024, we have a number of new powers to help us work more effectively to protect charities and their assets. They include:

Power to direct charities to take particular actions: This will allow us to compel changes and improvements that need to be made in a charity. This positive power will allow us to respond flexibly and appropriately to the wide range of situations we encounter. We want to focus on achieving beneficial outcomes from the use of this power and will use it where appropriate. The power does not relieve charity trustees from their responsibilities and legal duties in running the charity – we will not for example use it to take sides in a dispute.
Power to appoint interim trustees: Using this power, we will be able to help charities that cannot function due to a lack of charity trustees. Specific criteria must be met to allow us to do this. In using this power, we will seek good outcomes for the charity, which are likely to vary depending on the charity’s situation. More information on our power to appoint interim trustees can be found here.
Power to inquire into former charities and former charity trustees: This will extend the reach we have to make inquiries into organisations that are no longer charities and individuals who were previously charity trustees. This extension of our powers will enhance our ability to deal with situations and issues that may cause concern to the public.
Changes to OSCR’s powers to require charities and others to provide information: The timescales involved here will be clarified and the process streamlined, providing benefit to the progress of our inquiries.

A charity’s connection to Scotland

From now, OSCR must refuse an application to be registered as a charity from organisations that have no or a negligible connection with Scotland. To decide on this, we will need to look at factors including whether the organisation has a principal office in Scotland, occupies premises or carries out activities here. Our experience so far indicates that this will not be an issue for the overwhelming majority of applicants. Most of these are SCIOs (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisations), which in any case have always required to have a principal office address in Scotland. However, the new measure will ensure that we can deal with issues where they arise with organisations applying under other legal forms.

The requirement to have a connection to Scotland will apply to existing charities on the Scottish Charity Register from 1 October 2024, but we are already in touch with the charities we are aware of that are likely to be affected to try to resolve the issues involved.

Other changes

In addition to the changes above, the 2023 Act has made minor changes to simplify interactions between charities and OSCR and provide more flexibility. In particular:

Charities are no longer required to give OSCR 42 days’ notice of changes which require our consent (like changes to charity name, purposes in the constitution or dissolution).
OSCR can enter two charities on the Scottish Charity Register with the same name when there is a merger of charities – for instance, when an unincorporated charity is winding up and transferring its assets to a new SCIO, the new SCIO can be registered under the same name as the unincorporated one.

We will also be able to take action where the working or ‘known as’ name of a charity or an applicant for registration is misleading, offensive or too similar to another charity’s name, as we do now for charities’ legal names.

From 1 October 2024, OSCR has provided a publicly searchable record of individuals who have been permanently disqualified by the Courts from being a charity trustee so that charities can carry out due diligence on prospective new trustees.