Spott Community Association and its Constitution
The original SCA constitution, written in 2019, needed to be updated to allow business to be conducted legally by remote means such as Zoom. OSCR, the overall governing body of Charitable organisations in Scotland “allowed” committee business to be conducted remotely during the COVID pandemic lockdown but clauses indicating as much must now be formally included in the SCA governing document. SCA also needs to safeguard the association from exhausting the available pool of trustees by allowing re-election after serving a two year term.
Original constitution written in 2019: Spott Community Association (2019) – Constitution – 17 February 2021
Constitution approved at the 2023 AGM: SCA-SCIO-constitution-two-tier – revised 2023
Comparison between the current and proposed constitutions: SCA 2019 outline of additions to constitution
What is a SCIO?
The Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) is a legal form unique to Scottish charities. A SCIO can enter contracts, employ staff, incur debts, own property, sue and be sued. Becoming a SCIO also provides a high degree of protection against liability.
Scottish Ministers introduced the new SCIO legal form in April 2011 to allow charities to become incorporated and to be administered and regulated by a single body, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).
The governing document of a SCIO is a constitution that must contain several basic elements in relation to its governance and other key matters. The SCIO must also:
- have its principal office in Scotland
- have at least two members; these may include some or all of the charity trustees subject to the terms of the constitution
- use and apply its property in furtherance of its charitable purposes and in accordance with its constitution.
The legislation does not set out a standard format for a SCIO’s constitution, but it does require each SCIO constitution to contain certain basic information and rules that set out the minimum requirements of how the SCIO will be governed. The members of a SCIO may add further requirements to its constitution if they consider they would be useful to the SCIO’s circumstances.
Spott Community Association (2019) is set up as a two-tier SCIO, meaning that it has Members and Trustees.
The Members are those people that come together to form the organisation and as part of the constitutional arrangements have the right to appoint the Trustees who manage the organisation on behalf of the wider membership. The Trustees are responsible for governance, the system that controls how an organisation operates, and the mechanisms that holds the organisation, it’s Members and Trustees to account. Ethics, risk management, compliance and administration are all elements of governance.