Newsletter 2013 Issue 01

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Charitable Incorporated Organisations

This new type of company became available for registration in England and Wales from 10th. December 2012.

It has been available in Scotland since 1st. April 2011

Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) are a new type of charitable company, brought into being by the Charities Act 2006. Detailed regulations are in the Charitable Incorporated Organisations (General) Regulations 2012 SI 3012.

CIOs are designed to be a more efficient way to register an incorporated charity. Until CIOs became available, a charity that wished to be incorporated (and so have limited liability) had to register as both a company limited by guarantee and as a charity. Using a CIO should be simpler to incorporate and run as it will be registered with just one body (the Charity Commission) and will only have to submit one annual return and one set of accounts per year.

It will become possible to convert existing charities to CIOs in stages from March 2013.

More details are available on our new page on CIOs. For professional advice contact Community Companies CIC.