The Incorporated Societies Act 2022 was passed on 5 April 2022, and came into force on 5 October 2023. As a result, significant changes around membership, governance, general meetings, dispute resolution, winding up, financial reporting and auditing have been made. Below is a summary of the key changes you should know about.
It's important to familiarise yourself with the new Act and the changes that will come into effect, to ensure you remain compliant.
There is a long transition period before existing incorporated societies will need to re-register under the 2022 Act. The transition period is from 5 October 2023 to 5 April 2026. As such, there is no need to rush into the re-registration process. All incorporated societies will continue to be subject to the 1908 Act until they re-register under the 2022 Act.
Re-registration will involve filing a constitution that is compliant with the 2022 Act. Clubs that fail to re-register before April 2026 will cease to be incorporated and will be removed from the Register.
We are working closely with Sport NZ and support the phased approach it has adopted to assist sports entities to become compliant with the new 2022 Act. That approach firstly requires national sports organisations to essentially get their houses in order before offering assistance to their members.
Guidance from Sport NZ is for NSOs to hold off re-registering under the 2022 Act until it is known if sports will be required to cross-reference the new Code of Integrity for Sport and Recreation (Integrity Code) (as part of integrity and dispute resolution provisions in their respective constitutions). As such, until we know more about the new Integrity Code requirements to finalise the amendments necessary to the NZR constitution, the focus for NZR will continue to be the governance review. Amendments related to this review will be proposed (and voted on) separately to any mandatory amendments to re-register under the 2022 Act.
Once we have certainty of the Integrity Code requirements, we will finalise the necessary amendments to the NZR constitution to re-register under the 2022 Act. Then we will be able to modify the Sport NZ RSO and club constitution templates accordingly for use by PUs and clubs.
An exposure draft of the Integrity Code is due out shortly so we will have a better idea of what the requirements may look like. The final IntegrityCode will be issued by the new Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission after 1 July 2024. This means that, hopefully, we will have enough information in the second half of the year to finalise the necessary amendments to the NZR constitution to then be able to finalise the templates for PUs and clubs later this year. We will continue to keep you updated during the year.
If you have any further questions about the Sport NZ phased approach and/or how the new Code of Integrity for sport and recreation will impact the changes necessary as a result of the 2022 Act, please refer here on the Sport NZ website.
Last updated February 2024.