Getting your online annual return right: trustee numbers
A Scottish Charitable Incorporation (SCIO) is a legal form of charity. By law, SCIOs must have a minimum of three charity trustees.
The trustees are those in management and control of the charity. You may not always call them trustees – some organisations refer to them as a management committee, a Board or if your charity is also a company you might know them as directors.
156 charities registered as SCIOs reported to us in their latest online annual return that they had less than three trustees, despite this being a requirement. We reviewed the accounts for these charities to see if there was an explanation in the Trustees’ Annual Report (which is submitted with the online annual return). 57 had simply made an error when completing the return and had detailed three or more trustees in their Trustees’ Annual Report. Although we looked at SCIOs specifically, we are aware that other charities make errors when completing this question too.
It is very important that charities enter the correct number of trustees when completing the online annual return. When telling us the number of trustees, you should always enter the total number of trustees at the year-end date (the date to which your accounts are prepared). This number should include all your trustees, not only those who hold an office within the charity. Please take time to review the information you tell us in the online annual return before you submit it and make sure that it matches the information held in the accounts.
If your charity is a SCIO and has less than three trustees, then you must take steps to rectify this and appoint additional trustees. An explanation of how the situation arose and the steps being taken to remedy it should be included in the Trustees Annual Report.
Further guidance on submitting annual information can be found here: