Some 1,200 charities failed to register with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland within the three-month deadline, according to the regulator’s annual report released yesterday.

Charities in Northern Ireland have not previously been required to register with anyone apart from HM Revenue & Customs. But in December 2013 the regulator, which was created by the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) in 2008, began calling charities forward to join a public register.

Charities have been asked to register in tranches, and the CCNI has previously said that many charities have failed to register within the time and that registration applications were of a low standard.

A total of 4,867 charities had been “called forward” to register but the Commission received just 2,658 applications in the year ending 31st March 2015.

However because charities have a three month window to apply, some of these organisations were not required to have applied by the end of the year.

Decisions were made about 1,306 charities, while a further 1,000 applications were currently in progress, the report said. Of the 4,867 charities approached for registration, 434 informed the Commission they had closed or were in the process of doing so.

In the report’s opening statement, chief executive Frances McCandless said charity registration “remained to the fore as work to register the thousands of charities in Northern Ireland continued apace”.

More charities are being added “on a weekly, often daily, basis as applications are assessed”, she said. But she admitted the registration process was “slower than anticipated”.

This was “due to the poor quality of many of the applications received”, she said.

Last November McCandless warned that trustees who failed to register "could find themselves facing High Court action".

“It is the responsibility of trustees to take action to prepare for registration, including ensuring the Commission has their details for registration,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the regulator told Civil Society News: "When an organisation fails to meet their registration deadline, the Commission informs HMRC. Any decision to remove charitable benefits will be reassessed by HMRC.

"Under the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008, charity trustees have a statutory duty to apply to register their charity with the Commission. If the trustees fail to apply to register or fail to supply the Commission with the required documents and information, they will be in breach of the law and the Commission has power under the Charities Act to direct, by order, the trustees to make a registration application.

"If this order is not complied with, the Commission may then apply to the High Court. The trustees’ failure to apply will then be treated as a breach of an order from the High Court, with the Court deciding if the trustees are guilty of contempt and, if guilty, imposing the appropriate sanction."

But the spokeswoman  said the Commission "has not yet taken any legal action to order organisations to apply for registration".

'Long road ahead'

The Commission's annual accounts reveal that in the year ending 2015, it received £1.8m from the Department for Social Development and spent a total of £1.7m. 

Some 116 concerns were recieved by the regulator – of which 94.5 per cent were processed within 30 days of receipt of final information.

Its website was visited 84,273 times and a total of 10,290 queries were dealt with over the year, the report revealed.

In an accompanying statement, chief charity commissioner, Tom McGrath said the report “highlights a busy year for the Commission with significant progress across all areas of our work”.

But he said there was “a long road ahead” for the Commission.

He thanked the sector for its "patience and support”, adding that the regulator was "looking to the future and the next steps for charity regulation in Northern Ireland".

“This includes continuing our work to progress charity registration, to investigate allegations of mismanagement within charities and to prepare for the next chapter, the introduction of full annual reporting for all registered charities,” he said.

There are currently more than 7,000 charities operating in Northern Ireland, according to Commission estimates.