Question

Is a Village Hall Management Committee under the same constraints as a Parish Council

Answer 1

Is it a charity ?

Comments

Yes it is a Registered Charity

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Then IMHO it is an independent entity where the trustees must always act in the best interests of the charity as per its constitution and if Councillors declare an interest (well for my PC they do)  .  So trustee first Councillor second.  Not quite sure precisely what you mean by constraints.  Having said that we had a situation with our Community Centre whereby we  had a mixture of  Councillor and public  trustees which eventually morphed into a civil war .  The major bone of contention was the role the Councillors played .  Having said that the key ongoing point to be agreed is the  level of grant provided and the conditions attached to it.  Thankfully we are currently going through a stage of relative calm.  I am not an expert on Charity law

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Thanks Jamie

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As a charity ( registered) then it should have it's constitution and make-up lodged in  it's incorporation with the charity commission and be subject to submitting annual returns to the charity commission. The Management committee members details also part of that return. As pointed out, if a committee member is also a councillor it must be registered in their declaration to the PC and stated whenever the charity is on the agenda.
If as I suspect your question is "is the charity required to follow PC laid down meeting and conduct procedure requirements?" then the answer is NO. The charity must decide their own structure for carrying out their business.

Answer 2

What is the relationship between the parish council and the charity/village hall committee?  There can be lots of variations on this as the council can be sole managing trustee (not favoured by the charity commission but historically often set up that way) in which case meetings of the charity are quite separate from council meetings but the council could adopt standing orders etc. that reflect those of the parish council.  The Council might be simply a custodian trustee in which case it holds the deeds to the village hall but has no other role unless the, separate, village hall committee has resolved otherwise.  Sometimes a village hall committee is separate from the council but it's constitution allows the parish council to appoint trustees as representatives of the council.  Each scenario would give a different answer to your question.

Comments

There is no formal relationship between the two and there is no constitutional relationship - except that some of the Committee Members are Parish Councillors - we are such a small village, that is almost inevitable.

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Such involvement level by the Parish council would surely make it a Parish Hall not a village hall?

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Not in our case.  There are no formal connections between the Parish Council and the village halls (we have two in a parish of 700 people!!!), the only connections are that each of the two Village Halls alternate holding monthly Parish Council meetings - for which the PC pays an hourly fee.

Answer 3

The simple answer to this is that the charity will have a governing document that it submitted to the Charity Commission in order to obtain registered charity status. This document will contain the rules for operating the charity. Check that the document listed on the Charity Commission website is the same as the one you are currently using, as some charities have amended or replaced their governing document without seeking the approval of the Charity Commission. The document on the Charity Commission website is the one you must use, but you can go through a process with the Charity Commission to change it if you need to. If you would like further advice and support, contact your local ACRE branch, who are the experts in charitable community buildings.

Answer 4

This feels like a loaded question-it depends on what exactly you want to know, as no, they're not under the same constraints. I sit on both-they're very different in our case, but not in all.