The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator has told more than 100 charities that it plans remove them from the charity register after they failed to submit their accounts on time.
The OSCR said 112 charities were at risk of being removed for failing to submit accounts to the regulator, after changes to Scottish charity law came into effect this week.
The Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023 gives the regulator power to remove charities from the register that have failed to submit accounts on time and failed to engage with the OSCR about this breach of their trustee duties.
Charities must submit their annual accounts to the OSCR within nine months of their financial year end. The regulator said that if a charity failed to do so, “OSCR, members of the public and potential beneficiaries cannot be assured that those charities are effectively using charity resources for charitable purposes”.
A list of the at-risk charities has been published on the OSCR’s website, which includes the emergency response organisation First Response Scotland and the Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra.
Listed charities will be notified this month and given three months to re-engage with the OSCR and bring their reporting up to date “as soon as possible”, a spokesperson for the regulator said. Any charities that fail to respond will be removed from the register.
The spokesperson said some of the identified charities had not updated their accounts for a number of years: “While it is disappointing to remove charities from the register, the duty to report to the regulator underpins our regulatory framework in Scotland.”
The spokesperson said that while there might occasionally be legitimate reasons preventing a charity from submitting its accounts on time, the regulator expects charities to engage with it and provide assurance that trustees are working to submit the accounts as soon as possible.
“We will not be looking to remove late-submitting charities from the register in cases like this, provided the charity is taking steps to rectify the situation,” the spokesperson said.
This comes as the regulator announced changes to how charities report serious incidents, after a review of its notifiable events scheme showed that there were “mismatched perceptions and expectations” about the process and OSCR’s role.
Under the new legislation, the regulator has also gained a number of new inquiry powers, including the ability to direct charities to take particular actions to make necessary changes or improvements.
Previously, it was only able to instruct charities not to do certain things. The regulator said the new powers will allow it to respond “flexibly and appropriately to the wide range of situations we encounter”.
The changes will also allow OSCR to appoint interim trustees to a charity where it has fewer than the minimum number required or where its governing document does not provide a mechanism for appointing trustees.
Using these powers, the regulator will be able to support charities that have lost contact with their trustees or where trustees are no longer actively carrying out their role, it said.
The new legislation will also allow OSCR to refuse a charity’s registration if its connection with Scotland is negligible or non-existent – a change that comes into force from 1 October.
The regulator will determine this by looking at a variety of factors, including whether the organisation has a principal office in Scotland, occupies premises or carries out activities there.
Charities will also no longer be required to give OSCR 42 days’ notice of changes that require the regulator’s consent, such as changes to a charity’s name, purposes or dissolution.
Further measures from the act will come into place in October, including OSCR’s provision of a publicly searchable record of individuals who have been permanently disqualified by the courts from being a charity trustee, to help organisations carry out due diligence on prospective board members.
More changes will be enforced in the summer of 2025, including the publication of charity annual reports and accounts and a record of charity mergers.