Have your say on the Charity Commission’s changes
The Charity Commission is consulting on the annual return and increasing the number of questions asked for financial statements starting from 1 January 2023. The consultation is open until 1 September 2022 and can be found here.
What’s changing
The effect is detailed below – 16 additional compulsory questions for all charities; and up to 23 extra in total depending on your charity type :
|
Existing Annual Return |
New Annual Return – all questions |
|
|
Maximum number of questions |
36 |
52 |
|
Annual baseline – the core questions that would be answered by all respondents |
16 |
32 |
|
Sub-questions, responded to only by respondents with relevant operations or data |
20 |
20 |
An overview of what the new questions are focused on is as follows:
Income: More detail on whether income to assess over-reliance on one type of donor, sponsor, or income source.
Trustee payments: New question on any payments to trustees for goods and services
Grant Makers: To be asked the percentage of grants made to individuals and other charities, and if any of those grants were to connected parties
Overseas charities: Will need to confirm how their money is received from abroad and more details on monies being remitted too, such as contractual arrangements in place.
Premises: Details of all premises occupied and their purpose
Websites: Whether the site is hosted outside of the UK and how data protection is managed
Members: If the charity is part of a federated structure or consortium and details around members and whether they have voting rights.
Other questions include yet more detail on payroll and headcount, the impact of external change –such as Ukraine and covid 19 and questions around holding property for unincorporated entities.
We would encourage you to respond as some of these responses to the questions will be in the public domain and will make the annual return process more burdensome and time-consuming.
This article was written by Helena Wilkinson; if you would like to discuss any of the issues raised above, please contact Helena using the form below.
We always recommend that you seek advice from a suitably qualified advisor before taking any action. The information in this article only serves as a guide and no responsibility for loss occasioned by any person acting or refraining from action as a result of this material can be accepted by the authors or the firm.