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The voice of Scotland’s vibrant voluntary sector

Published by Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

TFN is published by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Mansfield Traquair Centre, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh, EH3 6BB. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Registration number SC003558.

Watchdog removes inactive charity

 

It has fulfilled its mission

A charity has been removed from the register by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) as it no longer meets the public benefit test.

The Great Scottish Tapestry Charitable Trust set up in 2011, is inactive but had not been wound up by trustees.

The trust was established to create a tapestry on the subject of Scotland’s history, the 'Great Scottish Tapestry'. When completed, the intention was for the trustees to transfer the tapestry to another organisation where it would be held for the benefit of the public and made available for viewing.

The charity has now fulfilled its purposes and the tapestry is now on public display in Galashiels and permanently held by the Scottish Borders Council under the management of the charity Live Borders

In  its report OSCR stated: “Following our inquiries, we are satisfied that the charity does not provide, or intend to provide, public benefit and as such they no longer meet the charity test and should be removed from the Register.

“We have taken the decision to remove the charity from the Register, as opposed to directing the charity to take steps to meet the charity test, because the Trust has fulfilled its objects and is no longer active.”

In recent years, the Great Scottish Tapestry Charitable Trust’s income has declined from £5,914 in the year to March 2020 to -£20 in 2022-23, according to OSCR’s website.

 

Comments

0 0
Dominic
4 months ago

Fulfilling it's mission is a welcome change..

0 0
Gareth Morgan
4 months ago

It's a bit worrying that the trustees of a charity as significant as the Great Scottish Tapestry Charitable Trust couldn't organise themselves to wind up the charity properly in accordance with its governing document.

The OSCR Inquiry Report is extremely brief: https://www.oscr.org.uk/news/inquiry-report-sc042623-the-great-scottish-tapestry-charitable-trust/ It tells us nothing about what engagement OSCR had with the trustees, which suggests that perhaps OSCR could not get any response at all from them. However, it seems that as recently as March 2024 someone filed accounts of some kind showing net income of £-20 for the year ending 30 June 2023, so there must have been some communication.

Whilst it is good that the Tapesty itself is now managed by the charity Live Borders, the Great Scottish Tapestry Charitable Trust clearly had some substantial grants from public bodies (it appears from historic data that it spent around £31,000 in 2017/18). So for its trustees just to 'disappear' without arranging a proper wind-up is very worrying.

Apart from anything else, every charity inquiry takes up a lot of resources for OSCR, and if the trustees had wound up the charity properly it would have released OSCR resources for other charities where concerns have been reported.