Legal background
- The principal legal framework for building societies is the Building Societies Act 1986. It has been amended on numerous occasions and was substantively revised by the Building Societies Act 1997, by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and by the Financial Services Act 2012 (which also amended the 2000 Act).
- The Building Societies Act 1986 continues to be the main Act governing building societies, and this Act inserts new provisions into the 1986 Act.
- It amends section 7(3) of the 1986 Act and provides HM Treasury with a power to make secondary legislation subject to the affirmative resolution procedure to enable the wholesale funding limit to be disapplied to certain descriptions of funds to be held for prudential purposes as specified by the Treasury. The Act amends section 104(2) of the 1986 Act to extend the current power to amend certain Parts of the 1986 Act by order made by affirmative resolution statutory instrument to assimilate it to modifications to company law to include the power to amend the constitutional provisions in Part 2 of the 1986 Act concerning common seals and the execution of documents. The Act amends paragraph 34 of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act to explicitly allow real-time virtual member participation in building societies’ meetings.
