Legal updates for voluntary sector companies
25th January 2007, 4:39 pm
Sector legal adviser Sandy Adirondack has produced her summary of the provisions of the Companies Act 2006 (passed in November) that will affect voluntary sector companies (charitable companies and companies limited by guarantee, community interest companies). As she points, other summaries of the Act may well not give adequate consideration to the differences between the various types of companies and therefore could be misleading. The Act is the longest-ever piece of legislation in the UK and this important summary, about as short as it can be, will still take a bit of digesting. http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/managing.htm#companiesact.
Much of the Companies Act won’t come into effect for a while, but some start from 20th January, including enabling company information to be sent electronically. http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/managing.htm#companycommunications.
From 1st January 2007, the Companies Act 1985 rules relating to the information that must be on company documents are amended and explicitly extended to include order forms, electronic documents and web sites. As ever, Sandy gives a practical interpretation, at http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/managing.htm#e-disclosure. NB the regulations were only laid before Parliament on 21st December, so don’t feel bad about having missed the start date!
And a reminder that the same web page has a summary of the new Charities Act too, at http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/managing.htm#charitiesact.