This month, we’re looking at some of the regulatory updates from February, including a guide to the Charity Annual Return 2023, a reminder of the Commission’s 5-minute guides for charity trustees and a reminder to donate safely to emergency relief appeals. We’ll also examine the latest OSCR news.
1. Charity Annual Return 2023: question guide
On 24 February, the Charity Commission published guidance on the new questions in the 2023 Annual Return and explained why these new questions will be included. The updated Annual Return will apply to charities’ financial years ending on or after 1 January 2023, so we recommend that you familiarise yourself with the questions as soon as possible.
2. ‘5-Minute Guides’ provide a basic toolkit for trustees
At the start of February, the Charity Commission launched the next stage of its campaign to raise awareness of core trustee duties. The suite of 5-minute guides now cover the following seven subject areas:
- Delivering purpose – advice on how to use your charity’s governing document, how to deliver on your charity’s purposes and the law
- Managing finances – advice on how to ensure your charity’s money is safe, properly used and accounted for
- Conflicts of interest – advice on how to identify and deal with conflicts of interest in your charity
- Making decisions – advice on how to make valid trustee decisions that are in your charity’s best interests
- Reporting information – advice on how and what you need to report to the Commission
- Safeguarding people – advice on your responsibilities to keep everyone who comes into contact with your charity safe from harm
- Political activity & campaigning – advice for charities that want to support, or oppose, a change in government policy or the law
3. Regulators urge safe giving to support Turkey-Syria earthquake relief effort
The Charity Commission for England and Wales and the Fundraising Regulator urged the public to ‘give safely’ and check if the charities are registered and legitimate before donating to support people affected by the earthquake.
4. The Scottish charity regulator OSCR publishes its first 2023 newsletter
The newsletter includes a summary of OSCR’s 2022 activity, showing for example that 698 charities were registered in 2022 by the Scottish charity regulator, and that 77,700 downloads of charity accounts were facilitated by the online register. The newsletter also links to guidance on how to complete the annual return via OSCR online, and what type of accounts need to be submitted to OSCR by charitable companies.