My good friend is a trustee of a church trust. Like the other trustees, he signed up without paying much attention to the responsibilities owed by the trustees. This is a very common situation that our clients often find themselves in. Many people are asked by their local church, school or other group to become a trustee of their group’s trust. It’s a great way to help out a local organisation and do good in the community.
However, it is important that trustees are aware of their duties as a trustee of a charitable trust to ensure the success of the organisation and the safety of the trustees and the trust’s employees. The Trusts Act 2019 provides several mandatory duties and some default duties which trustees must fulfil in their role as trustee. But in addition to these basic trustee obligations there exist other duties relating to employment, finances and privacy – to name a few.
One important set of obligations are to do with Health and Safety. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (“the Act”) obligations are owed by the person conducting a business or undertaking (“PCBU”). For charitable trusts this means that if your trust employs people to carry out tasks (for example a church that is running a kindy), then the trustees are a PCBU under the Act and take on health and safety obligations. This also applies if you are the landlord to another organisation who is using your premises, in which case both the landlord and the organisation can be considered a PCBU, both with health and safety responsibilities. A PCBU must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers, and that other people are not put at risk by its work including visitors to the workplace, or members of the public who could be affected by a work activity.
In the case WorkSafe New Zealand v Discoveries Educare Limited [2019] both the owner of the day care centre business and the landlord were found guilty of breaching their health and safety responsibilities when a dead tree fell and injured several children and a staff member at the day care. This case made it clear that when there are overlapping responsibilities between two PCBUs, it is very important to implement a health and safety plan clearly stating who is to carry out certain safety procedures. It is also important to note that you cannot delegate your PCBU responsibilities, so you must always be overseeing and reviewing the policies and their management.
If you would like to know any further information regarding your responsibilities as a Trustee, please get in touch with senior solicitor Rebecca Heale.
