What type of club are these documents for?
These documents are intended to be used by clubs, but only if they have the following attributes. They must be:
- unincorporated associations
- owned by their members (not a proprietor)
- not-for-profit
- not (registered/unregistered) charities.
Which documents are in this group?
The documents comprise:
- long form and a short form of constitution for such an association
- form of constitution for such an association where the club is a sports club which is to be a Community Amateur Sports Club (“CASC”) and it is intended to be registered with HMRC as a CASC
- guidance note and documents relating to "fit and proper persons" i.e. those acceptable to be trustees or managers of the club
- list of sports eligible for the purpose setting up a CASC
- application to become a CASC
Why do I need these documents, and how do they benefit me?
Note that a club of the type outlined above and its members and officers are subject to the general law, but not to charity or company law. The founders need to ensure that the risk of adverse legal consequences to members and officers is minimised.
For that purpose the club will need to have a founding document setting out clearly the nature of the club, the rights of all members as between themselves, the role of the committee members, the procedures that must be followed in the day to day running of the club, and other features that one would usually find encapsulated in such a constitution. The constitution documents in this group set out this detail.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is our members' club, legally speaking? +
An unincorporated association: a group of people bound together by their rules, with no separate legal personality. The club cannot own property, employ staff or sign contracts in its own name, its officers or trustees do those things on the members' behalf, and company law and charity law do not apply. That makes the rules themselves, your constitution, the club's entire legal framework. The templates in this group exist to make that framework solid.
Our club has run for years on handshakes. Do we really need a written constitution? +
Yes, and the longer you have run without one the more you need it. The constitution is the contract between members: it settles who owns the club's money and equipment, what the committee can spend, how officers are chosen and removed, how disputes and expulsions are handled and what happens to assets if the club folds. Without written rules every one of those becomes an argument. The long and short form constitutions here suit different sizes of club.
Should our sports club register as a Community Amateur Sports Club? +
If you qualify, the tax case is strong: Gift Aid on donations, at least 80 percent relief on business rates and corporation tax exemptions. Weigh two things first: your club must genuinely meet the conditions, open to the whole community, amateur, mainly sporting, and registration is effectively permanent, a CASC cannot voluntarily deregister and leaving the regime triggers a tax charge. The CASC constitution and application documents in this group support a considered registration.
Would our club be better off as a charity instead? +
Only if your purposes are genuinely charitable and for the public benefit, and most members' clubs are not: a club run for its members' own recreation is a private benefit body, which charity law does not accommodate. Sports clubs sit at the boundary, and the CASC regime exists precisely for clubs that serve community sport without being charities. A club cannot be both a CASC and a charity, so choose one route. The guidance note in this group compares the options.
Who is personally on the hook if the club is sued or runs up debts? +
The people who acted: because the club has no legal personality, contracts and liabilities land on the committee members or officers who incurred them, and in some cases on the wider membership. Manage the exposure: keep proper accounts, insure the club's activities, put property in the names of holding trustees under the constitution and think about incorporation if the club takes on staff, premises or serious contracts. The constitutions here include the protective structures.
