The Personal Community Charge (Exemptions) (Qualifying Courses of Education) (Scotland) Regulations 1990

Citation and commencement

1.  These Regulations may be cited as the Personal Community Charge (Exemptions) (Qualifying Courses of Education) (Scotland) Regulations 1990 and shall come into force on 27th June 1990.

Interpretation

2.—(1) In these Regulations–

“the Act” means the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987;

“relevant activities” with respect to a course means the receipt of tuition, the undertaking of supervised study or examination, and the taking part (as part of the curriculum of the course) in any supervised exercise, experiment, project or practical work;

“relevant course” means a course of education–

(a)

which subsists for more than 3 calendar months;

(b)

which is not a course of higher education specified in Schedule 1 to these Regulations;

(c)

with respect to which tuition is principally received otherwise than through correspondence; and

(d)

with respect to which the relevant activities are (insofar as they are normally carried out under the course at particular times) normally so carried out principally between 8.00 am and 5.30 pm; and

“the relevant number of hours per week” in relation to a relevant course means the average number of hours per week a person undertaking it would normally require to spend, in the period during which the course subsists, on relevant activities (excluding for the purpose of calculating that average any part of that period which is a period of vacation).

(2) For the purposes of these Regulations, a person is to be treated as undertaking a relevant course at any time if–

(a) that time falls within the period beginning with the day (“first day”) on which he begins the course and ending with the day (“the last day”) on which he completes it, abandons it or is dismissed from it (which such period includes any period of vacation between academic terms which falls between the first day and the last day), and

(b) he is not undertaking it–

(i) in consequence of an office or employment held by the person, or

(ii) in pursuance of arrangements made under section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973(1) and known by any of the names specified in Schedule 2 to these Regulations.

Persons undertaking a qualifying course of education

3.—(1) The condition mentioned in paragraph (2) below is prescribed for the purposes of paragraph 6A of Schedule 1A to the Act (conditions which require to be fulfilled for a person to be treated as undertaking a qualifying course of education for the purposes of that paragraph).

(2) The condition is that the person is undertaking at the time a relevant course with an educational establishment and–

(a) the relevant number of hours per week for that course exceeds 12, or

(b) where he is undertaking with the same establishment at the same time another relevant course (or other relevant courses), the aggregate of the relevant number of hours per week for all those courses exceeds 12.

James Douglas-Hamilton

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Scottish Office

St Andrew’s House,

Edinburgh

4th June 1990