Scottish charity accounts and trustees’ names
Howard Lake | 16 May 2016 | Blogs
The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) intends publishing charity accounts on its website at some stage. The 2005 Act is currently being discussed and modernised and the changes will allow OSCR to publish full accounts.
The Contact Team Manager does not know the timescales of these changes. However, the FAQs on “Targeted Regulation – accounts” state that OSCR will be redacting all personal and sensitive information – names, addresses, etc., and that if charities publish the accounts on their own website, they can redact the same personal information as OSCR. OSCR intends removing the names of trustees from the accounts before they are made available on its website!
OSCR reports that individual charity accounts do not belong to OSCR and are covered by the Data Protection Act. Therefore when OSCR publishes accounts, the personal information has to be redacted.
The Charity Commission has been publishing the names of trustees for a number of years, and the new Charity Commission for Northern Ireland has a similar look to the beta version of the Charity Commission, and includes the names of trustees.
OSCR reports that charities are encouraged to be transparent and if they publish their own accounts, “the trustees’ names should not be redacted”. However, OSCR reports that it cannot enforce this. If this is the situation, fundraisers and researchers can contact the charity and ask for a copy of their full accounts.
What a palaver!
Finbar Cullen, ResearchPlus
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.