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Constitutions!


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Hi

 

We are in the process of changing our consititution from the standard PLA to a version of it that steers away from a committee run setting. We are looking to run with 3 trustees and 2 members of staff are who are the 'management'. The staff - me and my supervisor will be running the preschool lock stock and barrel but we need the trustees to stay as a charity. Therefore need a constitution that states the trustees are not financially liable and are not responsible for the day to day running.

I am sure someone out there can help - many thanks

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No its not hard just paperwork that needs filling out,there's a complete guide to incorporation on PSLA website costs around £12 I think but full of useful advice. You should think about incorporation as a way of limiting trustees liability really-you get some of the benefits of being both a Ltd company and a charity. Will email you our constitution,you may want to tweak it but it will give a good starting point.

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  • 1 year later...

sadly no - not me at least (sorry - thats the originator of the topic's exciting adventure! :o )

My query comes as we have just taken up different insurance and I've a feeling the committe have now let the PLA membership lapse (we've always been members until now - 15 + yrs) - so was just wondering if we are still 'legal' really...can we use their constitution if no longer a member and will it matter much not being a member? xD

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I think it really depends on why you used them in the past. We are insured with them, committee can use Lawcall if required,we have also recently become incorporated as a Ltd company, just the Charity bit too finalise, so being members of PSLA has been very useful in that respect.

I'm not sure a PSLA Constitution would be valid if you are not members, best to check. :o

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I could be wrong but I thought that the requirement was that a registered charity had an approved constitution and the Charity Commission had pre approved a number of these to make things quicker for charities. The PLA constitution is one of these. Now as a copy of te constitution is freely available on their website to anyone I would have thought that a setting which had previously been a member and had already adopted it as the constitution under which it ran, would be able to continue using it. Failing that I would possibly just remove all references to the PLA from the constitution and resubmit it to the Charity Commission therefore ensuring they would pass it as suitable and save creating a huge amount of work.

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We haven't although we do intend to amend our current PLA constitution at our AGM this year. It will only be a slight change but I'm hoping that this will be ok and from speaking to someone else who I believe has done it, the Charity Commission didn't have an issue so ling as the changes were made in line with the requirements of the outgoing constitution - if that makes sense. There are model constitutions from other organisations also available on the internet for free too.

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Well we are still members because we had to use their insurance again. But that is exactly the clause we want to change. I have to say the agreement we will be proposing at the AGM will be to change the constitution accordingly if the committee finds it is a viable option. That gets me out of another meeting but get at least two heads looking at it carefully first and checking with the CC too. I'll let you know what we discover but as far as I can tell so far it is do-able.

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Thanks for the update holly35 - I like eyfs1966 am concerned about the assets section - we have spent all our funds on our new building but I certainly want them to 'take' the building. As I understand it the assests can be transferred to a similar charity - but who decides that I don't know.

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it is quite easy to change the place the assets go to... we had ours go to a local named charity, but were using the PLA constitution, had to have the relevant committee meetings and agm to approve changes before sending to charity commission for approval. Cannot remember sending to PLA though perhaps they did. Important thing was where the assets were going had to be a similar charity and not a business.

 

We did however benefit form settings which closed when PLa had the assets, in our area they divided all the money made between the PLA settings - unfortunately had this happen about 3 times in 2 years...

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We just changed the wording on ours in the beg, when we first had to have them, to read

 

If members decide to terminate the existence of the Pre-School any funds or equipment remaining after all the debts have been paid, shall be handed to a similar charity concerned with the education of pre-school children in the area of the Pre-School

 

It's very easy to do changes, do them as per your constitution dictates. Then send the changed constitution to CC, with the minutes recording this.

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Thanks Inge and lynned55. I think I might have got the idea from Inge originally but my mind is a bit all over the show at the moment.

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  • 1 year later...

We had the PLA one and changed it at an extraordinary general meeting. Basically we rewrote the part we weren't happy with and sent the new version with the minutes of the meeting, showing a quorum and a vote in favour of the change, to the Charity Commission. Have to say we never received a reply from them but as far as I could tell it was above board. We closed this summer, about 2 years after making the change, so I can't say if there would have been any other implications down the line but it was no problem for us. I was told that the PLA constitution was a model one that was accepted by the CC. Therefore it was easy for new charities to be set up using it as the constitution was pre-approved. However small changes didn't seem to alter the overall constitution so I assume that they would be accepted by the CC. I never ran it by the PLA but then again they never asked about it.

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