Under the 2005 Act, OSCR has a duty to review entries in the Scottish Charity Register from time to time, as well as to remove any charity that no longer meets the charity test.
Background
These requirements form the basis of our individual reviews of
selected charities, which test whether organisations in the
Register continue to meet the requirements for charitable status,
and look at any issues with the governance of the charities or
their compliance with charity law.
We have been carrying out these reviews since 2006.We ake a
risk-based approach, which means we target those types of charities
that we consider may be most at risk of failing to meet the
requirements for charitable status. We also review a small number
of charities at random.
Our experience
We issued a report called
'Protecting charitable status: a report on individual charity
reviews 2006-11' that explains how we developed our risk-based
approach. It covers the history of the programme of reviews
(previously called the Rolling Review), explains which groups of
charities were chosen, and sets out the results of our reviews so
far.
Our report also includes a useful 'Checklist for charity
trustees' to help trustees review their own charity to ensure
it continues to comply with the law and with our recommendations
for good practice.
From 2012, we broadened the basis for individual charity
reviews, to ensure that future reviews cover all
our regulatory concerns, including charitable status and
governance. We review and update our assessment of which types of
charities we should review regularly, taking into account newly
identified areas where issues may arise - for instance in how
charities comply with the new Equalities Act 2010.
Moving forward
Based on our experience, we do not believe that we need to
subject a large number of charities on our Register to active
individual reviews, although we do have powers to review any
charity. All Scottish charities must report to us annually and
provide us with certain financial information, which varies
depending on the size and complexity of the charity.
Our individual charity reviews are one part of our work to
protect charitable status, which also includes ad-hoc and routine
monitoring work and our inquiries and investigations. We
communicate regularly with charity trustees to explain lessons we
have learned from reviews and help them ensure that each charity
continues to fulfil its charitable mission and protect its
charitable assets.
We continue to publish a list of charities under
review.