The Regulator for Charities in England and Wales
From the 1 April 2008 trustees of organisations applying for registration will be required to have regard to the Commission’s public benefit guidance and to demonstrate their organisation’s aims are for the public benefit as part of the application process.
Please see our Public Benefit guidance for further information.‘Public benefit’ is the legal requirement that every organisation set up for one or more charitable aims must be able to demonstrate that its aims are for the public benefit if it is to be recognised, and registered, as a charity in England and Wales. This is known as ‘the public benefit requirement’. The Charity Commission has to ensure all registered charities meet the public benefit requirement.
Our application form and guidance has been updated to specifically include this requirement and will be available for use on the 1 April 2008. Applications on the old form will only be accepted until 1 June 2008. After that date your application form may be returned to you.
To register your organisation as a charity you will need to make a formal application to us. To help you to provide all of the information we need, we have issued a Registration Application Pack (the Pack). It contains an application form; a trustee declaration form; guidance notes; and a copy of our advice on the responsibilities of trustees.
We hope that you will find the Pack easy to use.
The Pack is available from Charity Commission Direct on 0845 300 0218 or can be downloaded from the PDF links below, (but first you will need to have downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader, version 5.0 or later). If you experience any difficulties in downloading the application pack, please contact Charity Commission Direct.
Note: If you are applying to register a charitable company which will take over the work of an existing registered charity (often referred to as incorporating the existing charity) you should use the new application forms in conjunction with the guidance notes. We no longer produce a separate application pack for this purpose.
CC5a - Application for registration (PDF)
CC5b - Application for registration: Guidance notes (PDF)
CC5c - Trustee declaration (PDF)
Information on where to send your application can be found in the Guidance Notes.
CC3 - The Essential Trustee: What you need to know
List of Approved Governing Documents
Charities and Public Benefit Guidance
We welcome feedback from our customers on all of our publications and services. If you would like to let us know how you felt about using the application process, please contact our Customer Service Manager at Woodfield House, Tangier, Taunton TA1 4BL or use this link Customer Service Manager.