Forty-four charities have applied to take part in the pilot review programme announced by the Charity Commission and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales last month.

A total of 61 accountants have also volunteered to take part in the pilot, announced at the ICAEW voluntary sector conference on 13 September.

The volunteers will be assigned an applicant charity and will conduct a review of its financial and management systems to identify risks.

Anonymised reports will be given to the Charity Commission, who will use these to help inform future guidance.

The ICAEW needs just 25 charities and 25 reviewers for the pilot, and is now sifting through the applications to choose the most appropriate.

Nick Brooks, chair of the voluntary sector group at ICAEW, said: “We are delighted at the response.  It will be interesting to see if there are any themes emerging at this stage in terms of the types of charities that have applied or what sort of problems they’ve identified.”

He said medium and smaller-sized charities would probably get the most out of the programme.