F&GP Meeting November 2017

WR I GLEY S ---- S OL I C I TOR S ----

6 October 2017

Charities for the future. The Official Custodian is a public trustee service provided by the Charity Commission see here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-official-custodian-for-charities- land-holding-service-cc13 .

The main benefit of the OC service is that you do not need to change the legal title each time there is a change of trustees and it is free.

Cons

The downside of this approach is the Commission turnaround times are slow and in all honesty their approach can be haphazard. There is no guarantee they will provide an Order. If they take a literal approach to the situation they might decide that the property is not held for a charity and they have no jurisdiction.

Considering the above it may be best to try the Commission first and if that fails try Option A.

In relation to getting the transfer right if it must be redone there are several common ways that legal title to property is held for charitable trusts including:

a) transfer into the names of all the managing trustees of the charity (charitable trusts are not limited to 4 trustees)

b) transfer into the names of nominee trustees, i.e. individuals nominated for the purpose, they hold the legal title and are subject to the instructions given to them by the managing trustees. Commonly there are 2 or 4 nominee trustees.

c) a trust corporation may hold as custodian trustee on behalf of the managing trustees.

d) the Official Custodian for Charities. Managing trustees are able to sign on the OC's behalf in the usual way.

Where there is a large group of trustees a resolution of the trustees pursuant to s.333 Charities Act 2011 permits the trustees to authorise 2 or more to sign on behalf of all of them. In this case the party would be all the named individuals. The testimonium and execution clauses would recite the resolution. I note the copy transfer provided contains an unsigned execution clause for the transferee. The format of the execution clause is wrong. One would expect to see name individual trustees or nominee trustees executed in the usual fashion for individuals. Alternatively if the transferee were a trust corporation their usual corporate execution clause would apply.

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