The Charity Commission gave official warnings to two charities that persistently failed to file their annual update with the regulator.
At the end of last week, the Commission published its latest progress update for its ongoing class inquiry about charities that have not submitted the required documents.
Charities with an income up to £10,000 should complete the relevant sections (income and expenditure) of the annual return and those with income above £10,000, plus all charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs) must prepare and file an annual return. Organisations with incomes above £25,000, and all CIOs, must also file copies of their trustees’ annual report and accounts.
In 2013 the Commission opened a class inquiry to look at those charities in default of their statutory obligations, often referred to as “double defaulters”.
Between April 2020 and March 2021, 25 charities submitted their outstanding annual documents and continue to operate as charities. This resulted in over £8m being documented by the regulator.
During the course of the year the Commission discovered that 19 charities had stopped operating and removed them from the register.
Official warnings
In November 2019 the Commission revised the strategy for this inquiry. This led to the Commission issuing four charities with notices that they would receive an official warning if they did not submit their documents.
Two of these charities then filed their documents. The Commission proceeded with the official warning in the other two cases.
Compass Bridge Limited is an alternative education charity, which was set up in 2012. In December 2020 it filed the annual return for 2016 and 2017, but all other documents are outstanding. The charity has filed the required documents with Companies House, which show it is still active and has £46,000 in reserves and employs eight people.
The second, Islamic Education Centre and Mosque, has not submitted anything to the regulator since 2019 and has three years of accounts overdue. Its annual report for the year ending March 2017 showed the charity had an income of around £100,000 and owned a building.
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