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DO WE NEED TO MAKE ANY CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES TO PERMIT LAY TRUSTEES?
In some cases the charity’s constitutions will provide that all charity trustees must be members of the institute. If this is the case, then it will be necessary to make the appropriate changes to the charity’s constitutions to remove this quali cation before any appointment takes place. This is unlikely to require the approval of the Charity Commission.
It will also be necessary to consider whether other administrative provisions should be added to the charity’s constitution to preserve the link with the institute and to ensure good governance. In particular:
Ÿ It might be appropriate to include a restriction providing that at all times a majority of the charity trustees must be members of the institute. Careful thought will need to be given as to whether this restriction is appropriate, depending upon the reason for appointing lay trustees, because it could have the unfortunate effect of limiting the number of lay trustees who could actually be appointed as the number of members of the institute diminishes or even suggest that lay trustees are "2nd class citizens". However, as discussed above, it will be necessary to ensure that a majority of the charity trustees (i.e. members of the institute and lay trustees) are Roman Catholic and so an appropriate provision may need to be included to provide for this
Ÿ As the lay trustees’ terms of of ce will not be linked to any dual role on the council, it would be sensible for the lay trustees to serve for a xed term of of ce, e.g. three or four years. This avoids the embarrassment of the superior having to ask the lay trustee to stand down after a period of time. Provision should then be made to enable them to be reappointed
at the end of that term of of ce and, if so, thought should be given to
have many continuous terms they can serve (e.g. maybe two or three terms followed by a xed period of say 12 months before they can be reappointed). In order to preserve continuity, it may be appropriate to consider staggering the terms of of ce of any lay trustees so that they do not end at the same time as the terms of of ce of the charity trustees who are members of the council
Ÿ The quorum provisions for a charity trustees meeting should be reviewed and, if appropriate, include a minimum number of charity trustees who are members of the institute, although again this raises the same issues as discussed above
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