Secretary, Chair and Treasurer - do they have to be Trustees?

I think this depends on the wording of the Trust document.

In the charity I work for, the Trustees are elected at the AGM and they can fight it out between them as to who is chair. The current Treasurer volunteered and was then elected. We don't have a secretary: our Company Secretary (because we are also a Ltd Co) acts as secretary to the Trustees, but the job could be done by anybody.

When you talk about a Director being Treasurer, do you mean a paid employee?

I'm finding this a bit confusing. Looking at your charity's governing document might help, and if it seems to rule out what you want to do then there are ways of getting it changed.

If you're setting up a new charity, then getting the governing document flexible is worthwhile.

If you want one trustee to hold two roles, I don't see a problem with that, but ALL trustees should be sufficiently financially literate to understand what's going on financially (since all are liable). AND you need to ensure that one person can't control the finances alone.

I've always had (at least) four signatories on bank accounts, any two to sign. At work I think all the signatories are now paid members of staff, and the treasurer can look at the accounts online but doesn't in practice carry out any banking functions.

At DH's work he's been the only paid member of staff 'known' to the bank, I think, with some trustees. That's all about to change and I can see a situation where no-one in the office is 'known' to the bank.

With the small groups I'm involved in, we're all volunteers, so we have any two of chair, treasurer, secretary and random other committee member to sign cheques and carry out internet banking. It could be just one named role and three randoms, the bank won't care as long as the mandate is signed correctly ...

Does that help? If not, if you want to put the exact situation I'll try to help more, or someone else might ...