Letter to be issued to charities to highlight new traffic light display

November will see the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland writing to around 7,000 charities in preparation for the roll out of the new traffic light display on the register of charities.

The new display, expected to go live later this year, will indicate if a charity has submitted their accounts and reports to the Commission on time or late, and by how many days they are overdue if not submitted at all. Charities will be marked as shown in the picture below.

The Commission’s monitoring and compliance team are this month writing by email to charities to highlight that the system will soon be live. And if a charity misses their next annual reporting deadline, their register entry could be marked as amber or even red, for in default.

In fact, under the new Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, almost 2,000 charities will have their first mandatory annual reporting deadline in January 2024, and with the new traffic light display set to launch soon it is important that they do so on time. To check your charity’s submission deadline click here.

All registered charities have a deadline to submit their annual reports and accounts to the Commission within ten months of their relevant financial year end. This deadline is set in law under section 68(3)a of the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008. This means that the Commission will not be able to amend a status once it has been flagged as overdue, even though the charity may have a valid reason for submitting late.

To avoid any risk of submitting annual reporting information late, charities are encouraged not to wait until the last minute but to prepare in advance and submit all the required information in good time.

Annual reporting deadline reminders are issued to charities prior to the deadline, to remind them to submit the requested information on time. It is vital that charities ensure their trustee details and contact information on the register of charities is accurate and up to date, as otherwise they may miss out on regulatory updates and reminders issued directly from the Commission.

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 in error and are no longer a trustee with the charity, or were never a trustee, 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.

The Commission will never ask you for private/personal details or banking information out of the blue, and if you are wary of an email or of clicking links that appear to be from the Commission, then please ignore the link and go directly to our website to access the information you need. You can find helpful information on staying safe online here: Top tips for staying secure online - NCSC.GOV.UK

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