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Cracks start to show in new online register 1

Finance | Tania Mason | 14 Oct 2008

Complaints have started to surface about the accuracy of the information presented on the Charity Commission’s new online register.

Two weeks after the launch of the register, at least three charities have found errors in the information that appears on their entry.

The entry for the Crusader Foundation states in one part that its 2005 accounts have still not been filed, and are 979 days overdue. Yet two columns across from this statement is a link to those very accounts, and clicking on that link brings them up, complete and scanned in.

Anomalies in entries

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) also has an anomaly in its entry. According to the register, its 2006 accounts were received on 24 September 2007, but there is no link to these accounts so visitors cannot access them. The same entry shows that the annual return has not been received and is now 343 days late, yet the JPR said it was “99.9 per cent sure” that it was filed at the same time as the accounts.

“The return is on our website, so it’s not as though we’re trying to hide anything, it’s very much out there in the public domain. It must be some mistake on the part of the Commission,” said Judith Russell, JPR’s director of communications.

The Pattaya Orphanage Trust has two entries under its name, because the original Trust was incorporated in 1982, and the current incarnation in 2001. On the Commission’s old website, the accounts for 2004 were entered for the wrong charity, which the Trust pointed out at the time. The Commission then inputted them for the correct charity, but on the new website the date that has been entered for receipt of those accounts (207 days late) was the date of the new data input by the Commission, not the date they were received.

Same accounts appear twice with different dates

The accounts still appear on the pages of the old charity too, so the same accounts appear twice, but with different ‘received’ dates on the cover – even though the Trust’s director Andrew Scadding insists they were only sent once.

The entry for last year’s accounts also shows they were received late, in March, but Scadding says they were mailed in January. “Knowing what has happened before, we suspect that the date shown is the date they were processed, not the date they were received,” he said.

“The date information is therefore bogus.”

Old manual systems at fault

The Charity Commission said it would update the accounts information for the Crusader Foundation and the Pattaya Orphanage Trust.

"The information relates to historic 2004-5 data received when our manual scanning service was in its infancy," said a spokesman. "In 2007 our secure online service was launched. This enabled charities to file their accounts and returns electronically and the information received online automatically updates a charity's Register entry overnight."

He also said that no annual return 2006 had been received from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. "Although a paper copy [of the accounts] is available upon request, we wouldn't make the accounts available online until the annual return has been received."

Charities 'should check own details regularly'

The spokesman added that before the Commission launched the new register, it contacted all charities with an income of more than £500,000 and invited them to check the accuracy of their entry.

"We would encourage all charities to regularly check their details on the register, and to contact us if they think an amendment is required. It's also worth noting that because charities can now update their register entry online, the risk of inaccuracies should be reduced even further."

At a seminar on public trust and confidence in charities yesterday, Dame Suzi Leather said the Commission had found roughly 500 charities with inconsistencies between their annual report and return, and another 1,000 in need of attention.

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