Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisations – dissolution regulations amendments: consultation

Background

In 2019 an independent working group was formed to examine proposals from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) on improvements to the Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Removal from the Register and Dissolution) Regulations 2011 (the Dissolution Regulations).

The working group published its report and recommendations on 10 March 2020. The report contains valuable background information on the issues identified and the group’s rationale for their recommendations. We would like to express our gratitude to the working group, whose members gave their time voluntarily to examine this technical area of Scottish charity law.

Progress on this area of work was unfortunately delayed due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the recovery from the pandemic, our principal focus was the introduction and implementation of the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023 (the 2023 Act).

We have continued to consider the working group’s recommendations and discuss them with OSCR. This has informed the development of proposed amendments to the Dissolution Regulations. Those regulations were (and proposed amendments to them would be) made under section 64 and section 103 of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005.

In this consultation we ask questions about these proposed amendments. We have split these questions across four topics:

A. Changes to the SCIO dissolution application process

B. Removal of SCIOs from the Scottish Charity Register

C. Restoration of SCIOs to the Scottish Charity Register

D. Assessing impact

An overview of the working group’s recommendations and our response is in Annex 4. A full summary of these recommendations is in Annex 5.

Depending on the outcome of this consultation, we intend to introduce the proposed amendment regulations before the Scottish Parliament in early 2026.