Our charity is developing a range of trading activities that can’t be justified as furthering our primary purpose – we’re getting involved in room hire, conference organisation, catering, producing display materials etc for other organisations, not all of which are charities.

We’ve been advised to establish a trading subsidiary to take over these activities, to avoid any problems with the Charity Commission or the Tax Office.

Question: what is the best legal structure for a charity’s trading subsidiary? What sort of constitution should we use?