The Charitable Incorporated Organisation will not be available now until October, the government has admitted.

The update is contained in the Office for Civil Society’s one-year-on progress report in response to the recommendations of Lord Hodgson’s Red Tape Task Force.

In response to recommendation 9, that “reforms should be made to the law to give limited liability to trustees of unincorporated charities”, the Office for Civil Society said: “This recommendation will be delivered by the introduction of the charitable incorporated organisation.

“The OCS is now taking forward the various clearances required before the statutory instruments can be laid in Parliament and the new form of charity should become available during October.”

It added that an implementation timetable will be published shortly to give more of an indication of the proposed introduction times and phasing arrangements.

The launch of the CIO has been hit by repeated postponements since it was first mooted in the Charities Act 2006.  The Charity Commission claimed last autumn that it had been ready for months for their introduction but hold-ups at Parliamentary level had caused the delays.

The last due date announced by government was the first quarter of 2012, but now it has been pushed back again to October.