Trustee information will be published by OSCR from late 2025

OSCR have announced that two of the provisions introduced by the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023 will come into effect later this year.

Collection and publication of trustee information

Starting in summer 2025, OSCR will begin to collect the following information for all trustees of Scottish charities:

• Name
• Home address
• Email address
• Telephone number
• Date of birth

From the end of 2025 (OSCR have not yet specified an exact date), trustee names will be published as part of each charity’s entry on the online Scottish Charity Register. The other information in the above list will not be published but will be recorded by OSCR.

Publication of unredacted accounts

Currently, OSCR publishes the accounts of some, but not all, charities on its website. Where accounts are published by OSCR, they are redacted to remove the names of trustees and any other individuals who are named in the accounts. From the end of 2025 (again, the exact date has not been specified), OSCR will publish the accounts of all charities and these will no longer be redacted.

Why is this being done?

The stated aims of these changes are to enhance transparency and public trust.

How will this affect your charity?

For charities which are constituted as limited companies, and for cross-border charities, there will essentially be no change to the information disclosed online, as trustee names and unredacted accounts are already published by Companies House and the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

For other charities and their trustees, these changes are significant. Until now, trustees could remain anonymous if they wanted to. The amount of information made available about their connection to a charity was entirely in their own hands. This will no longer be the case. Trustees will be able to apply for exemption if publication of their name would jeopardize their safety or security, but it remains to be seen how this exemption will be interpreted and implemented.

What to do next

It is the responsibility of a charity’s trustees to ensure that the information held and published by OSCR is complete and correct. Further information on how and when OSCR will be collecting this information will be made available in due course. In the meantime, trustees should:

• Be aware of this change and how it may affect them and their charity, and
• Ensure that an appropriate person is tasked with collecting this information and reporting it to OSCR when the time comes.

Further information can be found on OSCR’s website Get ready for new charity regulations coming this year