Corporation Tax Act 2010 section 659

Meaning of "open to the whole community"

Section 659 defines what it means for a community amateur sports club to be "open to the whole community", which is one of the qualifying conditions for registration under the CASC regime.

• A club must offer membership and access to its facilities to all people without discrimination — including indirect discrimination on grounds such as ethnicity, nationality, religion, beliefs, sexual orientation, sex, age or disability (unless required by the nature of a particular sport).
• The annual costs of membership must not be so high as to create a significant barrier to joining, using facilities or fully participating in the club's activities; costs exceeding a threshold set by Treasury regulations are presumed to be a significant obstacle unless the club has made arrangements to ensure they are not.
• The Treasury has the power to make supplementary regulations defining what counts as full participation, which costs count as membership costs, and how those costs should be calculated — and these regulations may have retrospective effect.
• A club is not disqualified from being "open to the whole community" simply because it charges different fees to different categories of member, for example concessions for juniors or pensioners.