Charitable Incorporated Organisations: An Analysis of the Three UK Jurisdictions

The specific legal forms available for charitable organisations have received much less attention by scholars as compared to work on the definition of charity, the boundaries of charitable status and the duties of charity trustees. Under each of the three UK jurisdictions, it could be argued that all charitable property is held on trust (in the sense that it is held for interests of the charity’s beneficiaries) but many charities are no longer formed using the structure of a trust. Charitable organisations can have many possible structures including charitable trusts, charitable associations, charitable companies and now charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs). Until recently the UK lacked any specific legal form for charities. The CIO was created to remedy this: a corporate body with limited liability, formed purely by registration with the appropriate charity regulator. Since 2008 it has been enshrined in statute in all three UK jurisdictions, though implementation dates only from 2011 in Scotland and from 2013 in England and Wales. The focus of this paper is a comparison of the CIO form in the three UK charity law jurisdictions. It analyses the frameworks for CIOs established in England and Wales, Scottish CIOs (SCIOs) and the (yet to be implemented) CIOs in Northern Ireland. It concludes that whilst the CIO concept is effectively reflected in all three jurisdictions, the differences between these three types of CIOs are much more than just those needed to comply with the different regimes of charity regulation – the differences raise important choices for those seeking to establish new charities operating UK-wide.