Communities Committee,
Meeting date: Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Official Report
247KB pdf
Subordinate Legislation
Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (SSI 2006/218)
Agenda item 5 is consideration of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006. A copy of the regulations, which are subject to the negative procedure, was circulated to committee members on 27 April. The regulations make provisions for the accounting records that charities must keep, the statement of accounts that they must prepare at the end of each financial year and the audit or examination of those accounts that must be undertaken.
The regulations apply to the accounts that are prepared for charities' financial years starting on or after 1 April 2006. Charities with a gross income of £100,000 or more will be required, as will all charitable companies, to produce fully accrued accounts in accordance with the statement of recommended practice. Charities with a gross income of less than £100,000 will be able to produce simplified accounts on a receipts and payments basis.
The provisions for auditing or independent examination of accounts also depend on the level of a charity's income. Charities with a gross income of £500,000 or more must have their accounts audited. Charities with a gross income of less than £500,000 will be able to have an independent examination instead of an audit.
The Subordinate Legislation Committee has drawn the attention of the lead committee and the Parliament to the instrument on the grounds of failure to follow proper legislative practice in respect of regulations 1(2) and 14(3) and on the grounds of defective drafting in respect of regulation 3(7).
I invite members' comments on the regulations.
As no members wish to comment, I simply point out that that this appears to be the second time in recent history that we have considered regulations under the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 that have been drafted in a substandard fashion. I suggest that we write to the Executive to raise our concerns. Are members content with that course of action? Are they content to raise concerns similar to those of the Subordinate Legislation Committee about the poor quality of the drafting of the regulations? In my view, doing that does not alter the fact that the committee can still report that it is content with the regulations. Although we will write to the Executive, are members content with the regulations?
Members indicated agreement.
Therefore, the committee will not make any recommendation on the regulations in its report to the Parliament. Are members agreed that we should report to the Parliament on our decision on the regulations?
Members indicated agreement.
I advise members that day 1 of our stage 2 consideration of the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill is scheduled to take place on 14 June, when we will consider amendments to sections up to the end of section 14 in part 2 of the bill. The second deadline for lodging such amendments is Friday 9 June.
I hope that I have not read out Katy Orr's note wrongly.
The first meeting is on 14 June and the deadline is 9 June.
I hope that that is clear, but an e-mail will be sent to members to confirm those details.
Meeting closed at 11:46.