Does your charity own or tenant land in Scotland?

If the answer is yes, you need to be aware of a new register, the Register of persons holding a controlled interest in land (the RCI). If you are required to register on the RCI, the deadline is 1st April; the penalty for non-registration can be up to ￡5,000.

To be required to register, you must:

• BE an owner or tenant of land situated in Scotland; and
• HAVE an "associate" who controls what you do with the land, or has the right to exercise control over what you do with it (or in fact exercises such significant control).

If there is no associate, there is no requirement to register.

"Land" includes more than just... well, land. It includes:

• buildings and other structures;
• the seabed of the United Kingdom adjacent to Scotland;
• other land covered with water;
• separate legal tenements, such as rights to fish salmon, rights to petroleum or natural gas, or rights to ferry.

If the charity is a company or a Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered in Scotland or elsewhere in the United Kingdom, it is exempt from registration: this is because companies and CIOs already have to notify the Registrar of Companies of this information anyway - the RCI does not require you to give the same information twice.

If the charity does own or tenant land, and is not exempt, does it have an "associate"? This is where things start getting complicated. "Associate" is defined differently according to whether the "associate" is an individual, a partnership, a trust... The over-arching characteristic of an associate is the exercise of control over the way the owner/tenant of the land (the "recorded person") or the right to exercise such control.

Note that one recorded person can have more than one associate, and that one person/entity can be an associate of more than one recorded person.

After the RCI formally opens on 1st April, the deadline for making any necessary entry on the register is 60 days after:

• the owner/tenant of land becomes liable to register as a recorded person; or
• the recorded information changes.

More information can be found on the Registers of Scotland website (www.ros.gov.uk/our-registers/rci). Or call me: I will lead you through the pre-registration checklist and, if appropriate, the registration process.

For any help on this, or on any other matter of company law, contact me at any time.

Graham Hedley, ACG is an independent Chartered Secretary, principal of G M Hedley, Chartered Secretaries. He has been qualified for more years than he wants to admit to. Contact him at [email protected] or on 075 0190 1390. Your first consultation is free.