The Regulator for Charities in England and Wales
A: You will not receive a paper form in the first instance. We will ensure that you receive a notice as soon as possible after the end of your financial year inviting you to complete your charity's form online. We will send this either by post or by email if you have supplied us with an email address for contact with the Commission. We will begin issuing notices for the completion of Annual Return 2008 in June or early July 2008. The notice you receive will offer the option of requesting a paper form but you will have to make a specific request for this. We will not send you a paper form as a matter of course. If you think you will need a paper form do not leave it until the last minute before requesting one. A pre-printed form can take up to 4 weeks to be generated and posted to you by which time your submission could become overdue.
A: The Annual Return (including Trustees’ Annual Report and accounts) must be submitted within 10 months of the charity's financial year-end. The deadline date will be printed on your initial letter or email. We recommend that you return the form to us at least three weeks before this deadline. There is no statutory deadline for the Annual Update form, but we ask you to file this as soon as possible.
A: The number of the form relates to the financial year-end of the charity. The Annual Return 2007 (AR2007) for example, should be completed by charities for financial periods ending in 2007. The Annual Return 2008 (AR2008) will then be completed in respect of financial periods ending in 2008, and so on. A non-company charity's financial "year" will usually cover a 12 month period but can be as little as 6 months or as long as 18 months in exceptional circumstances such as a change of financial year-end. A non-company charity can only change its financial year-end if it has not previously done so within the last 3 years. If you are affected by a change in financial year-end and are not sure how to proceed, please contact Charity Commission Direct on 0845 3000 218 for advice. Advisers are available to answer your queries between 8am and 8pm, Monday to Friday and 9am to 1pm on Saturdays (excluding national holidays). We also have a Textphone service on 0845 3000 219 for hearing or speech impaired callers.
The rules governing Accounting Reference Dates for charitable companies may be found on the Companies House website.
A: If, for example, your financial year-end has changed from 30th September 2008 (AR2008) to 31st January 2009 (AR2009) you should inform Charity Commission Direct on 0845 3000 218. They will arrange for your charity's financial year-end to be amended on our database and we will ask you to complete appropriate form in due course.
A: We ask charities to classify themselves using three headings. These describe WHAT the charity does, WHO you help, and HOW you operate. This makes it easier for potential donors, beneficiaries and others to find the charities they want on the Register of Charities. We display the classifications you have previously chosen. Please check these, and if the details are incorrect or incomplete please amend on your paper form by ticking the relevant boxes next to each classification. The classifications are broad categories that we cannot tailor to suit individual charities, so we will not update our records from any manual amendments you make to the text. There is provision elsewhere on your form, however, to explain more fully what you do, under the section headed ‘Charity activities’.
You should select at least one category under each of the three classification headings to describe your charity's activities. These classifications will be made public.
A: The trustees are those who, under the charity’s governing document, have overall responsibility for running the charity. They may be referred to as trustees or by a different title such as members of a council, management committee or, if the charity is a company, directors. They should not be confused with holding or custodian trustees who sometimes hold property for a charity but do not have management responsibilities.
Charities can sometimes have corporate trustees, but most will have either a corporate trustee or individual trustees, not both. A corporate trustee is a body which has a separate legal entity and has been identified in the governing document as being its trustee. It should not be confused with an organisation identified in the governing document as a nominating body able to appoint individual trustees.
A: The Annual Return questions this year are designed to draw out information about the resources available to and spent by the charitable sector. The Register entry for every charity that has completed Part B will soon convert the information into a graphical representation of the charity which will be displayed on our website. This will make the information easier to understand and more accessible to the public.
The public Register of Charities on our website will also contain consolidated financial information taken from Part B of all submitted Annual Returns which will be presented graphically as a snapshot of the entire Register.
This will be achieved through the automatic capture of the information contained in the Annual Return combined with information taken from a sample of charities, rather than through the manual scrutiny of the accounts of over 75,000 charities that are required to submit their accounts to the Commission.
A: We require the DOB of the trustees so that we can ensure that they are eligible to act as trustees in the eyes of the law. We also use this information for identification and intelligence purposes. Dates of birth enable us to distinguish between similarly named individuals and identify those involved with a number of different charities.
The way in which the Commission now holds personal information means that we may not be able to add (or update) trustees unless we have a full set of details for them, including DOB. We do not make trustees’ dates of birth, addresses or telephone numbers available to the public.
A: When an online form is submitted, the charity’s record is updated to reflect the information provided in the form. The updated information appears on the charity’s record on our website within 2 working days of the submission. A paper form received, in our Charity Information Division, is checked and logged as having been received. This updates the charity’s submission record on our website and prevents future reminder notices from being sent. The forms are then sent to our external mailing bureau for data capture. After verification, the information from the forms will then be displayed on the Register of Charities appearing on our website. This process can take up to 2 weeks or longer at busy times of the year. This highlights the advantage of an online submission in maintaining an up-to-date record of the charity’s details.
Initial vetting of paper forms and accounts may give rise to queries about the information provided. Commission staff may need to contact you to clarify any areas of uncertainty or they may consider that the charity would benefit from further, more detailed advice and support.
A: When you submit your Annual Return online you will be given an option to attach your TAR and accounts. The Online Services Home Page also displays an option for charities to submit their accounts and report online. You will first need to click on "Send us your Trustees' Annual Report and Accounts". In order for you to submit these via the Online Services page, they must be saved in Portable Document Format (PDF). You may already have prepared them in this format. If you haven’t, but you have access to a scanner, the scanning software may allow you to save scanned accounts as a PDF document. You can then submit them via the Online Services Homepage. If you do not wish to send us your TAR and accounts online, you can, of course, post them to us at the following address:
Charity Commission
PO Box 1300
Liverpool
L69 3BF
A: The Commission's automated mailing system will generate at least two reminders. The first reminder informs trustees that their deadline is approaching and it will be sent to the charity contact approximately two months before the charity's deadline. The second reminder or default notice informs the trustees that they have missed their 10 month deadline for submission. The charity’s submission record will be displayed on the Public Register as being in default. If there are extenuating circumstances which prevent the charity from submitting the forms on time (e.g. illness) we may be able to extend the deadline. Our policy on the granting of extensions can be found on our website. If you think that you are not going to be able to complete and return the forms by your deadline date please call Charity Commission Direct (0845 3000 218) for further guidance.
The Commission has recently developed its policy towards defaulting charities. This involves the issuing of further reminders. These will advise trustees that continuing failure to respond to requests for information may be taken as evidence that the charity has ceased to operate or exist. This could result in the removal of consistently defaulting charities from the Register.
A: Our current lead-time on issuing reminders is about two weeks and this may be extended by postal delays. In addition, recording receipt of documents is slower at times when many returns are due (February and November in particular). We make every effort to ensure that forms are recorded on the day of receipt but occasionally there may be an overlap between the generation of reminders and the recording of submissions. This is why we tell you to ignore the reminder if you have recently submitted your documents. As more charities submit their form online, resulting in more timely recording of documents, this problem will lessen over time. You can check to see if your documents have been recorded as received by viewing your charity’s Register entry on our website.
A: As explained elsewhere on these pages, you will not receive a paper version of an Annual Return or Update form with your initial notification. The initial notice you receive will be an invitation to complete your form online. If you would rather complete a paper form, you must send back to us a request slip for a pre-printed form. Do not delay. A pre-printed form could take up to 4 weeks to be generated and posted to you.
You can also order a paper form from our Online Services Home Page or by calling Charity Commission Direct on 0845 3000 218.
A: Yes. Even if there is no change to the trustees or income levels etc we need to receive all the relevant forms so that the Register is kept up to date with accurate information. The public Register of Charities (accessible from our website) now shows the dates on which the charity submitted its documentation. If we do not receive any forms from a charity within 10 months of the financial year end, the charity's record will show "documents overdue". This may adversely affect your charity's public image.
A: Send the notice back to us with an explanation of the circumstances surrounding the dissolution of the charity. This will then be forwarded to the relevant division of the Commission. We may need to ask for further information, including the final accounts of the charity, before confirming that it has been removed from the Register.
A: A paper form would not have been issued automatically because we are encouraging charities to complete their form online. However, if you have had a paper form that needs to be replaced we can arrange for a duplicate form to be issued. This can be obtained by calling Charity Commission Direct on 0845 3000 218. One of our operators will take your details and arrange for you to receive a duplicate form. You will need to quote the charity's registration number when calling. A duplicate form will be pre-printed with the charity’s details and could take up to 4 weeks to reach you from the date of your request. It is important, therefore, not to leave your request for a paper form until the last minute.
A: We have produced Guidance Notes to accompany each cycle's Annual Return and Annual Update forms. These can be found on our website. Alternatively you can contact Charity Commission Direct on 0845 3000 218. Advisers are available to answer your queries between 8am and 8pm, Monday to Friday and 9am to 1pm on Saturdays (excluding national holidays). We also have a Textphone service on 0845 3000 219 for hearing or speech impaired callers.