Covering Letter
Dear Consultee
CONSULTATION ON THE PROPOSALS FOR CHARITIES REORGANISATION (SCOTLAND) REGULATIONS 2007
I am pleased to enclose a copy of the consultation paper on proposals for Charities Reorganisation (Scotland) Regulations 2007 published today. The consultation paper outlines the Scottish Executive's proposals for the regulations to be made under section 39 of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005. All responses to the consultation should be submitted by 15 January 2007.
This consultation and all other Scottish Executive consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultation. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.
The Scottish Executive now has an email alert system for consultations (SEconsult:http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/secondsult.aspx). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SE consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.
Handling your response
We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form attached as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.
All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Executive is subject to the previsions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.
Next steps in the process
Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public (see the attached Respondent Information Form), these will be made available to the public in the Scottish Executive Library by 12 February 2007 and web pages by 19 February 2007. We will check all responses where agreement to publish has been given for any potentially defamatory material before logging them in the library of placing them on the website. You can make arrangement to view responses by contacting the SE Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.
What happens next?
Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on reorganisation of charities. We aim to issue a report on this consultation process by early February 2007 and lay the regulations by late February 2007.
Comments and complaints
If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to me at the above address.
Yours faithfully
Anita Popplestone
Charity Law Team