What should a new charity trustee be told when they join?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: covered, with two differences that change the pack — the duties are statutory rather than guidance, and a new trustee’s name will be published on the Scottish Charity Register, on a clock that starts when you add them. Northern Ireland: partly covered — CCNI’s account of what a new trustee should find out is established, and so is the absence of any statutory duty list to induct against, but no Northern Irish induction checklist or equivalent pack was found; build the content from the structure-based duties CCNI describes rather than from an England and Wales list.

What goes in a trustee induction pack?

A trustee induction is the pack and briefing a charity gives a new trustee before they take part in decisions. It needs four things. This page follows the Charity Commission’s guidance for England and Wales and sets out what changes in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It assumes each new trustee has already passed the trustee eligibility check — induct only people the charity can lawfully appoint.

• The governing document. The actual document, not a summary of it. It is the source of most of what the board may and may not do.
• The duties that apply in your jurisdiction. Not a generic list. Which nation you are in changes whether the duties are statute or guidance, and changes what a breach means.
• The honest liability position. What the person is personally exposed to, and what your structure does and does not protect them from.
• The last set of accounts, and the current budget. A trustee cannot manage resources responsibly without knowing what the resources are.

The fourth item on that list is the one most packs carry. The third is the one most packs leave out. That is not an accident: it is the awkward conversation.

But a person who signs up without it has agreed to something they were not told about. And the board loses the thing an induction is for: evidence that everyone knew.

Here is the liability position in brief, enough to build a pack around. The full version is on what trustees are personally liable for. Trustee liability runs in two directions. Liability to the charity itself — losses you cause it — applies whatever your legal form, incorporated or not.

Liability to third parties is the half that a company or a CIO changes. Third parties include a landlord, an employee or someone injured on the premises. In an incorporated charity, contracts are in the charity’s name. In an unincorporated charity, the trustees sign personally, and nothing caps their exposure except the size of the charity’s assets.

Say both halves. The Charity Commission’s own framing is that it is “extremely rare, but not impossible” for trustees to be held personally liable. A pack that gives a new trustee only the reassuring half is not doing its job.

Which trustee duties apply in each nation?

The duties differ by nation, so a generic pack gets them wrong. The trustee duties are explained on their own page; this section says only what the pack needs from them.

England and Wales. The duties are Charity Commission guidance — CC3 sets out 6 of them — and not a statutory list. That does not make them optional. But it does mean the Commission’s own must/should convention decides how each element is enforced.

CC3 defines the convention itself, verbatim. For must: “‘must’ means something is a legal or regulatory requirement or duty that trustees must comply with”. For should: “‘should’ means something is good practice that the Commission expects trustees to follow”.

Put that definition in the pack. It is the single most useful thing a new trustee can learn about how charity guidance is written.

Scotland. The duties are statute, in s.66 of the 2005 Act. The pack should induct against the section rather than against CC3.

Two subsections have no English counterpart and belong in any Scottish induction. s.66(4) provides that any breach of the general duties “is to be treated as being misconduct in the administration of the charity”. So a breach is not merely a failing. It is the trigger for regulatory action.

s.66(5) then puts a duty on every other trustee. They must take reasonably practicable steps to see that:

• a breach is corrected and not repeated
• a seriously or persistently breaching trustee is removed

In Scotland, a new trustee is being told they are responsible for their colleagues’ conduct as well as their own.

Northern Ireland. There is no statutory list of general trustee duties to induct against.

The Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 contains none. The provision that came closest, s.94, has never come into force.

Duties are assembled from general law, by structure. The Trustee Acts cover unincorporated charities and trusts. The Companies Act 2006 covers charitable companies. So Northern Ireland follows the English pattern here, not the Scottish one.

But an England and Wales duty list should not simply be substituted for the gap.

In its Guide 2, CCNI does describe what a new trustee should find out before joining:

• read the governing document, the policies, the accounts and the reports
• meet the trustees and the staff
• attend a meeting as an observer
• ask about training and how often the board meets

That is a good list. It is framed as questions a candidate asks, not as a pack the charity hands over. This page found no Northern Irish induction checklist or equivalent pack document. That absence was searched for, not assumed, and it is not filled in here.

Scotland: the register exemption window

Before agreeing, a Scottish candidate needs to know two things. Their name will be published. And the window to ask for an exemption runs from the day they are added.

Since March 2026 the Scottish Charity Register publishes charity trustees’ first and last names. OSCR holds more than that: home address, email, telephone number, date of birth and date of appointment. But it publishes only the names.

The part that matters for an induction is the timing. It is widely misreported. There was no flag day.

Under the transitional provision, a trustee’s name appears only once it has been provided to OSCR. That happens through the annual return or an OSCR Online update. Exposure is rolling, charity by charity, on each charity’s own return cycle.

A trustee who does not want their name published can apply for an exemption — the process is on recording trustee details with OSCR. But the window runs from the date the trustee is added. So a candidate told after the event may already have lost the chance.

There is no express legal duty to warn a candidate about this. The practical duty is obvious. Tell Scottish candidates before they agree, not after.

One related trap: accounts are now published unredacted. The charity itself has to remove an exempted trustee’s name from the accounts. OSCR does not take responsibility for personal data left in a submitted document. A charity can win an exemption and then leak the name through its own accounts.

Charitable companies: identity verification before appointment

A new trustee of a charitable company must verify their identity with Companies House before appointment, so this item cannot wait for the pack. The trustees are the company’s directors in company law. Since 18 November 2025, a new director must verify before they are appointed — or before incorporation, if they are a founding trustee. That is immediate, not a transition.

Existing trustees appointed before that date have a transition period. They verify through the company’s own next confirmation statement. That is a different question, and it belongs with your eligibility checks rather than here.

CIO and unincorporated charities are unaffected by this duty. It is company law, not charity law. An induction pack should say so rather than imply it applies to everyone.

The Charity Governance Code as a structure for the pack

The Charity Governance Code’s foundation principle maps almost exactly onto what a new trustee needs to know. That makes it a good structure for the pack. Principle 1 has 5 outcomes. They are about trustees understanding their role, their charity’s purposes and the time commitment involved.

The Code’s other principles are set out on the Code explainer. How a board assesses itself against them is on assess yourself against the Charity Governance Code.

Two honest caveats. First, the Code is voluntary: following it is not a legal or regulatory requirement. It is written by a cross-sector steering group, with the Charity Commission listed only as an observer. Second, it is an England and Wales code.

Northern Ireland has its own Code of Good Governance. The Developing Governance Group publishes it as the DIY Committee Guide. That group is a partnership that includes Volunteer Now, NICVA and CCNI.

The Northern Ireland Code is built on five principles, not the England and Wales Code’s eight. It is also voluntary in a different way again. Its own publishers describe it as broad and generic, a tool for continuous improvement. And it is not framed as apply-or-explain.

A Northern Irish induction pack should use its own Code, not the England and Wales one.

How to record a trustee induction

Record:

• the date the pack was given
• what was in it
• the trustee’s confirmation that they worked through it

An induction that leaves no trace is worth little when it matters. The Governance Code expects trustees to understand their role and commit enough time to it. A document transfer does not show either.

The order matters as much as the content. Induct before the first meeting the new trustee votes at, not after it. A trustee who has voted on decisions before understanding their duties leaves those decisions harder to defend. In Scotland they may also have missed the register exemption window entirely.

Once the pack has been worked through, the natural next step is the one it points at: mapping the governing document. That is where a board finds out what its document permits, prohibits and leaves silent.

Common mistake: handing over the governing document and calling that an induction

It is the obvious thing to hand over, and it feels like enough. It is not. The Governance Code’s foundation principle expects trustees to understand their role and commit enough time to it. A document transfer shows neither.

It also leaves out the one item the document cannot supply: the liability position.

Common mistake: not telling Scottish candidates that their name will be published

The change is recent, and no explicit legal duty requires anyone to warn candidates. So it falls between people. The exemption application window runs from the date the trustee is added. A candidate told afterwards may already be too late.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO recruits two trustees in March and inducts them in June, after the next board meeting.

Both attended that meeting and voted. Nothing they did was invalid. But any decision they influenced is harder to defend. Neither had yet been told what their duties were or what they were personally exposed to.

The charity also gave itself an avoidable problem with its own records. The induction date now sits after the first act. That is the wrong way round for a file that is supposed to show a board acting knowingly.

Had Tollgate been a Scottish charity, the cost would have been sharper. The register exemption window runs from the date each trustee was added. By June it may have closed. The delay would then have made the choice for both of them.