Hansard

During consultation on the bill, respondents have been clear about the need for ministers to offer a wider range of entities that a community body could use. Stakeholders in particular highlighted Scottish charitable incorporated organisations, or SCIOs, and community benefit companies, or bencoms, as being suitable. At the moment, the right to register an interest in property and the community right to buy in proposed new part 3A of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 can be exercised only by “community bodies”. The bill as introduced sets out the types of legal entitles that members of the community may form to be a “community body”. The amendments in this group will add SCIOs and bencoms to the types of legal body that are eligible to be part 3A community bodies under proposed new part 3A of the 2003 act, and will align that part with parts 2 and 3 of the 2003 act. Amendments 62 and 65 specifically include community benefit societies and SCIOs as eligible legal bodies for the purposes of proposed new part 3A of the 2003 act. Their effect is that community bodies will be able to take the form of a company limited by guarantee, a community benefit society or a SCIO when they form their part 3A community body. That will provide communities with more flexibility to select the type of body that best meets their requirements. The amendments will mean that the registered rules of a community benefit society and the constitution of a Scottish charitable incorporated organisation must satisfy certain requirements in order for a body to be a community body for the purposes of the community right to buy. Those requirements are similar to those that are currently in place for companies limited by guarantee. The amendments will have a similar effect to the amendments that the committee agreed to last week in relation to parts 2 and 3 of the 2003 act. Amendment 65 seeks to insert new subsection (1B) into proposed new section 97D of the 2003 act. Paragraph (g) of that new subsection includes a provision that, “on the request of any person for a copy of the minutes of a meeting of the SCIO, the SCIO must, if the request is reasonable, give the person within 28 days of the request a copy of those minutes”. The right would be open to a wide range of interested parties. Among the more obvious ones would be the owner of the land in question, members of the community or even other community bodies that were looking for examples of good practice. As far as what would be considered a reasonable request is concerned, I would expect community bodies making such a decision to base it on common sense. If the request were for the minutes of an annual general meeting, for example, that would be perfectly reasonable, but if it were for the minutes of a meeting that was held, say, 15 years ago or for the minutes of all meetings over the previous 10 years, that would be another matter entirely. Public bodies must make similar considerations in relation to freedom of information requests, although community bodies are not subject to the freedom of information legislation. Amendment 65 also provides some measure of protection for the community body against unreasonable requests by including a provision that, where a request is made, the community body “may withhold information that is contained in the minutes”. Information that could be withheld could be personal information or anything—either personal or commercial—that was provided in confidence. Again, we would expect community bodies to base their decisions on factors that are similar in nature to those that are set out in freedom of information legislation, at least in terms of what would be reasonable to withhold. Amendment 65 also includes a provision that “any surplus funds or assets of the society are to be applied for the benefit of the community.” It would be for the community body to decide how to use those surplus funds; the provision is simply there to ensure that any such surplus funds are, in keeping with the bill’s policy aims, used solely for the benefit of the community. I turn to amendments 63 and 64. At present, proposed new section 97D(1) of the 2003 act sets out that a part 3A community body must be a company limited by guarantee that meets certain requirements. Amendment 63 seeks to amend that list of requirements. The bill as introduced states that the articles of association of a community body must provide that the body has at least 20 members, and amendment 63 seeks to reduce the minimum number of members to 10. The intention is to address the difficulties, as highlighted by the committee, that some smaller or remote communities may experience in finding enough members to form the community body. Amendment 64 also seeks to amend the list of requirements of the articles of association of a community body. Currently, the requirement is that the articles must provide that the majority of members of a community body must be members of the community. The amendment seeks to change that so that the articles must provide that three quarters of the members of the community body are members of the community. That is to ensure that, even in relation to community bodies in which the number of members is small, the interests of the local community are protected. I note that, last week, the committee agreed to similar amendments in relation to community bodies under part 2 of the 2003 act, and to crofting community bodies under part 3. Amendment 66 will allow ministers to disapply the requirement for a company limited by guarantee, and a community benefit society or Scottish charitable incorporated organisation, as inserted by the amendments in this group, to have no fewer than 10 members if ministers think that that is in the public interest. Amendment 67 will renumber a subsection following the insertion of the additional types of legal body. Amendment 68 will insert a power to enable ministers to amend at a future date the subsections listing the types of legal entities that communities can use to form part 3A community bodies. The amendment will enable ministers to add to the types of legal entities that communities may use to form community bodies under proposed new part 3A of the 2003 act. Amendment 69 is a consequential amendment that specifies how a community benefit society and Scottish charitable incorporated organisation, in addition to a company limited by guarantee, will define their community by reference to “a postcode unit or postcode units or a prescribed type of area”. Amendment 70 is a consequential amendment following the insertion of community benefit societies and Scottish charitable incorporated organisations as types of body that communities can use to form a community body. It will add definitions of “community benefit society”, “registered rules” and “Scottish charitable incorporated organisation” to the bill. I turn to amendment 71. The bill as introduced does not permit a part 3A community body to modify its memorandum or articles of association without ministers’ consent in writing, as long as the land or any part of it remains in its ownership. Amendment 71 will apply that prohibition to a Scottish charitable incorporated organisation’s constitution and a community benefit society’s registered rules, following the inclusion of those two types of legal body as eligible bodies for the purposes of proposed new part 3A. Amendment 72 is a technical change that will add the omitted word “body” after “community” in new section 97E(3) of the 2003 act, as inserted by section 48 of the bill. Amendment 88 is linked to amendment 68 and will subject the ministerial powers inserted by amendment 68 to the affirmative procedure. I move amendment 62.