Excepted charities which were hurrying to register with the Charity Commission by the looming deadline of 1 October, have now been given an extra 18 months to do so.

Excepted charities have historically not needed to register with the Commission, even though they were regulated by it. They were excepted from the requirement to register either by legislation or an order made by the Commission. Most of these charities are armed forces charitable funds, Scout and Guide groups, and charities connected with some Christian churches.

But the Charities Act 2006 (now the Charities Act 2011) introduced changes to the rules governing excepted charities – most importantly that charities can only be excepted if their income is below £100,000 a year.

Charities whose income is more than £100,000 lose their exception and have to register with the Commission.

The exception was due to expire on 1 October 2007, but the deadline was extended to 1 October 2012.  Now it has been pushed back again to 31 March 2014.

The latest extension came in a statutory instrument laid before Parliament in July.  This statutory instrument formally came into force on 1 September.

Around 4,000 excepted charities have registered with the Commission since the implementation of the Act, but the regulator could not say how many more it was expecting.

Asked whether it had been struggling to register all the previously-excepted charities by the 1 October deadline, because of its limited resources, the Commission replied: “The deadline extension was an Office for Civil Society decision.”