Age Scotland could make up to half of its employees redundant and stop many of its services as it faces financial pressures, “predominantly due to a significant drop in income from gifts in wills”.
The older people’s charity announced its restructure plans this week, saying that legacies had historically been a “major” and “reliable” source of income.
However, it said notifications of gifts in wills had been “unexpectedly slow” in the current financial year, which had resulted “in a fraction of the amount we would usually expect to receive”.
It added that there was “no logical reason” to explain why legacy income had fallen so quickly over the past six months, but said it was a sector-wide problem.
In the face of a shortfall of more than £2m in the next financial year, Age Scotland has decided to make “drastic” spending cuts to staff and services.
The charity employed 104 staff in the year to March 2025 and received £1.54m in legacies, an increase from the year prior of £1.45m, out of a total income of £4.59m.
Age Scotland’s total expenditure for 2024-25, meanwhile, was £6.14m.
‘Devastating’ cuts
Age Scotland announced that a consultation for staff whose roles have been affected was underway and will take about two months.
Katherine Crawford, chief executive, and Stuart Purdy, chair, in a joint statement, said: “This is devastating.
“In order to adapt to this significant drop in income and put the charity in a sustainable financial position […] we have no alternative course of action than to consider proposals which reduce expenditure.
“This will have a huge impact on the scale of the services we can offer. Under our proposals, some will reduce, and many will stop completely.”
Crawford and Purdy said that flat funding rates, oversubscribed grant pots and sustained operating cost rises had created a “fragile environment” for charities.
The Age Scotland bosses added that despite income generation and fundraising activities performing “ahead of our targets”, the charity could not make up for the loss in legacies.
An Age Scotland spokesperson told Civil Society: “We understand there might be challenges in the legal system about notifications and probate in the courts.
“We had hoped that this would change and speed up. It’s a tricky process – the time it takes even just to realise somebody’s wishes can take a long time.”
Civil Society understands the charity’s policy and communications team are among those at risk of redundancy.
Animal charity plans redundancies
Meanwhile, animal charity the Scottish SPCA told Civil Society that it has had to announce some redundancies as it withdraws “dedicated resources” from three islands to make savings.
Six auxiliary inspectors who work on Shetland, Orkney and the Western Island have had their jobs placed at risk as part of a bid to make a 20% annual saving.
A spokesperson said: “We still cover the islands, our inspectors will still continue investigating any cases, it's just we won’t have any dedicated resource based on the island to do that initial triage step.”
The animal welfare charity is also downsizing from four regions to three, it confirmed.
It is entering a six-week consultation period to discuss staff redeployment.
When asked about the problems facing their charity, the spokesperson said: “Costs have risen for everybody.
“Operating costs have really increased, as has national insurance, and staff costs have gone up as well – on top of that it’s a really difficult period to fundraise.
“Last year there was a billion less going into charities in the UK and obviously we are affected by that, everyone is feeling the pinch.”
