Have you received a letter from the Commission recently?

To ensure they are informed about changes brought in under the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, the Commission has this week issued letters to over 46,000 trustees of registered charities to advise them of their legal duties under the new law. Trustees include Church Elders and Deacons, Directors named on Companies House and members of management committees.

The contact information used for the mail out to charity trustees was provided by registered charities, either at the point they were registered or as part of their annual reporting. This information is securely managed by the regulator but it is the legal responsibility of charities to ensure their trustees’ information is accurate and up to date.

If contact details are out of date, previous trustees who have stepped down may receive information that is not relevant to them, but more importantly current or new trustees may miss important updates regarding their legal duties, for example around annual reporting. Details of the changes are available here.

Changes to trustee contact details entered on the charity register can only be made by the charity via the Online services portal on the Commission’s website: Update your charity's details | The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (charitycommissionni.org.uk).

If you have received a letter from the Commission and are no longer a trustee with the charity, or were never a trustee, we would advise you to contact the charity in the first instance to request that their entry on the charity register is updated, and your information removed as appropriate, as soon as possible, by them.

If any issues arise with the charity updating your information on the register, or you have concerns that your personal data has been misused by the charity in question, please do not hesitate to contact the Commission by email to admin@charitycommissionni.org.uk