Why?

When the Friends of St Peter’s, Sudbury was set up as a charity back in 1976 there was only two legal forms available, either as a company or as an unincorporated association. Nowadays there is a purpose built legal form called a charitable incorporated association which combines the advantages of a company (a seperate legal entity to the trustees that run the charity) and the ease of running of an unincorporated association. Most charities set up now adopt the CIO route and the Charity Commission, which regulates all charities, has set up a very easy route for charities originally set up as unincorporated assocations to convert to CIOs.

Why now?

The CCT has said they will no longer deal with Friends groups set up as unincorporated associations. Friends groups need to be either CIOs or become part of the CCT. The trustees of the Friends of St Peter’s strongly believe that they should be independent of the CCT and firmly rooted in the community.

How do we convert?

To convert an existing charity from an unincorporated association to a CIO the Charity Commission requires that both the charitable objects and the trustees of the unincorporated association and the CIO should be exactly the same. For the Friends that means we need to review the charitable objects set out in the constitution and ensure they are still appropriate given that much has changed since 1976 when they were originally set out. Any changes will require the approval of the members of the Friends and so we need to call an Extraordinary General Meeting to approve these changes. If the members approve these changes then we will next need to get approval of the Charity Commissio for these changes.

Once the updated constitution is approved we can then apply to the Charity Commission to set up the CIO on the basis that it will replace the existing unincorporated associatoin charity. If the Charity Commission is satisfied with the application they will register the Friends of St Peter’s, Sudbury as a CIO. This does not mean that the old charity instantly disappears but that it will be wound down with all its assets transferred to the new CIO – once the new CIO has its own bank account. So for a period there will be two charities, each called the Friends of St Peter’s, Sudbury but each with a different charity number.

The above is a very short summary of the process which for the Friends should be relatively straightforward. Other charities with staff, contracts and owning property will find it less straightfoward.

Review of our Charitable Objects

Our charitable objects were set out in the 1976 constitution and the world has changed since then. Today we are no longer running St Peter’s and today charitable objects tend to be much more general in nature. We have therefore reviewed the constitution as a whole and we propose that it is updated to reflect what we currently do and is made more general in nature so it is more future proof.

Extraordinary General Meeting on 14 September

We are calling an Extraordianry General Meeting on 14 September at 6.30 pm in the Joy Abbott Hall in School Street (the old United Reform Church) CO10 2HA. The purpose of the meeting is to approve the changes to the constitution of the Friends of St Peter’s, Sudbury. There will be time for explanations and discussion of the proposed changes.