Closing a charitable trust

[chas49]

My wife is a trustee of a small charity, the purpose of which was to make grants to other charities out of money given to the charitable trust by the wills of her late uncle and aunt.

The trust started out with a significant (7 figure) amount and has given substantial grants to various charities (operating in a defined field) over the last 10 years. The funds were held in various investments and cash, but over the years as the capital was paid out has diminished and is now only a few thousand in cash.

The deed which set up the trust provides that the trustees may dissolve the trust if it is no longer practicable to meet the objectives, and that any remaining funds should be distributed to charities in the defined field of work.

The trust has been advised by a solicitor that their charges for drawing up a "deed of dissolution" would be £750, which is around 15% of the remaining funds.

I can see nothing in the original deed which states that dissolution must be by a deed, and there is nothing on the Charity Commission website that I can find about this - other than providing a form for notifying the Commission of a charity's closure.

Questions:
1 - Is it necessary to prepare a deed?
2 - If it is, is there a prescribed form of wording and
3 - is it really necessary for this to be done by a solicitor, or
4 - could this be done by the trustees and witnessed in a comparable way to witnessing a will?

LF advice will be much appreciated.

[Tempi]

If you google 'closing a charity' there is a link to a .gov website which then sets out what you can do. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-close-a-charity

Is it a registered charity, registered with the Charity Commission? The link also take you to an online form that can be used. Does the incorporating document (trust deed?) say what is needed to close the charity down, other than just pay the proceeds to similar charities? In essence, if there are no charitable funds, for a charitable trust, then there is no charity trust

I suspect the deed would cover the position of covering off any outstanding liability to any charity debt, to ensure the Trustees have no liability to anything that crops up in the future. A professional trustee might prefer a deed. if a deed is needed, then solicitors do tend to be the ones to draw up deeds.

if there are no other documents needed, do you still need to do a set of accounts for the final year? if so, then at least these could be evidence of the closure of the charity

Hope that helps