OSCR challenged over financial disclosure demands

Finance | Tania Mason | 7 Jan 2009

The Charity Law Association has admonished the Scottish regulator for attempting to compel charities that operate on both sides of the Scottish border to declare their profitability.

The requirement that charities should declare their surplus or deficit from activities in Scotland, as contained within the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator's (OSCR) consultation paper on the monitoring of cross-border charities, goes beyond the OSCR's remit, according to the CLA.

"OSCR is required to be concerned with the propriety of a charity's operations, but not its viability or financial success," it said in its response to the consultation. "We are concerned with the suggestion that poor liquidity, low reserves and threats to viability are a key monitoring priority for OSCR.

"OSCR should therefore clarify with the Commission and for the general public that even though OSCR's monitoring priorities may include investigating ‘poor liquidity, low reserves and threats to viability' this is not intended to result in intervention by OSCR unless at the same time there are indications of possible maladministration."

Trustees must not be expected to ‘understand' the law

In another section, the CLA said it would be difficult for trustees to confirm that they have "read" and "understand" their responsibilities in relation to the various pieces of legislation, as most trustees are lay people and will not have the requisite expertise to achieve this level of knowledge.

"We would suggest replacing the words ‘read' and ‘understand' with ‘are aware of and will consider' or ‘will have due regard to' or an appropriate combination of the two."

Common approach to late filing issues

The CLA recommended that the two regulators adopt a common approach to late filing issues, as much as they could, and implied that the OSCR (board pictured) should try to emulate parts of the Commission's new online register.

"It is anomalous that charity trustee names are accessible to the general public via the Commission's website but not from OSCR," it said.

Who's Who: Tania Mason

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