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Why are we making a change?

King's Church has operated as a charitable trust for many years.  This has worked well, allowing us the benefits of being a charity such as claiming gift aid on donations made to the church.  

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Charitable Incorporated Organisations ('CIOs') are a new legal structure for churches and other charities that help them to stay charitable organisations, whilst improving two key areas of how they operate.  If you're interested in further detail - please read on below.

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If you don't want lots of detail, you can skip to the form at the bottom of the page to fill in a gift aid form.  We will also be in touch with you to give you the new details for our new bank account for any future giving to the church.

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Advantages of becoming a CIO: Trustee LIabilitY

Currently, as a charitable trust, King's Church is not regarded as a single legal entity.  This means we need to have legal representatives to help us to run, called Trustees. Each Trustee is legally responsible for the activities of our organisation, so they take on personal liability for the obligations of our operation.  This means that the personal assets of the Trustees are potentially at risk.  We pay indemnity insurance for the Trustees to manage this, but it is understantably quite a burden to carry as a Trustee, which means it can be challenging to invite new Trustees to serve.    

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By becoming a CIO, the Trustees are no longer personally liable for the charity; it is the CIO alone that is liable and so only the assets of the CIO are at risk.​​​

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Advantages of becoming a CIO: Property Ownership

The second reason for making this change to become a CIO relates to property ownership.  Similar to the above, because a charitable trust isn't a single legal entity, it cannot own property.  As charitable trust, any buildings have to be held in the names of the Trustees on behalf of the church.  We then have to go through conveyancing every time the named Trustees change.  

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As a CIO, the church will be able to own the building, avoiding the costly and complicated ownership process that we have had up to date.  We recently completed the final process for the Church Centre, which is now owned fully by the CIO.  

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Why Do YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS CHANGE? 

To complete the transition to a CIO (which is a new legal entity, but retains the same name, King's Church), we must switch to a new church bank account.  This has been opened and is already active.  For accounting purposes we have agreed a switchover date to the CIO of 1st September.  

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This means that we have to ask everyone to update the details for the new bank account, as well as collecting new gift aid declarations to the new CIO.  

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We are very aware of potential payment fraud, so this process will be done partly by post and personal contact.  We will collect gift aid declarations using the form below.  

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WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?

There are 2 things we need everyone who gives to the work of King's Church to do:

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1. Fill in a new gift aid declaration form, using the form below.

2. Update the bank account details you have for giving to King's with the new Co-Operative bank account details for any giving from 1st September 2024 onwards, which we will also write to you individually about.  Please do check with us if you are unsure about any part of this process - we are here to help if needed.  

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The new bank account details are:

Account name:  Kings Church Southampton

Sort code: 08-92-99

Account number: 67352704

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If you have any questions, please contact one of the Trustees (Rich, Brian, Mel, Debbie, or Paul).  Thanks.