The Regulator for Charities in England and Wales
(September 2008)
Excepted charities always have, and continue to be, fully under the supervision of the Charity Commission. They are called excepted charities because they have been excepted from the requirement to register. This exception has been given to them either by legislation or by a Charity Commission order.
However, excepted charities with an income over £100,000 will need to apply for registration very soon.
The vast majority of these registrations must be accomplished by 1 October 2009 when we expect that previously exempt charities will need to apply. This is a large task for all concerned.
The Commission has been carrying out preparatory work with the denominations and umbrella bodies over a number of years. We have been working to an anticipated commencement date of 1 October 2008.
These provisions will now be introduced in January 2009, rather than October 2008, in order to give some excepted charities affected more time to prepare for registration with the Commission and provide additional time to put in place measures to minimise the regulatory impact of the Charities Act on the governing bodies of foundation and voluntary aided schools in England and Wales. However the registration programme for church and Armed Forces charities will still commence, as planned, in October 2008.
The under-pinning excepting regulations have been extended until 2012. This is to allow time for the review of the Charities Act 2006 to take place and for recommendations arising from it to be considered. We anticipate that ultimately the income level triggering the requirement to register will be the same for all charities.
Exempt charities are those listed in Schedule 2 of the Charities Act 1993. The list includes some educational institutions, and most universities and national museums. More detail on exempt charities may be found in Operational Guidance OG57.
From 1 October 2009 exempt charities that are not subject to any other principal regulator will need to apply to the Charity Commission for registration if they have an income over £100,000.
On 1 October 2008 we will be starting to register charities that have previously been excepted from the requirement to register and have an annual income of more than £100,000.
For the Charity Commission this means we will be registering between 4,000 and 5000 extra charities in the coming year ie an approximate increased workload of more than 60%.
Because of this exceptional increase in the volume of work we are seeking to schedule the receipt of these applications in order to provide a good service to all of our customers.
Most of the previously excepted charities are connected with either:
a) churches and chapels belonging to various Christian denominations; or
b) the Armed Forces.
Click the links below for further information on:
Earlier this year we introduced a new facility to enable organisations that are:
to apply for registration via our on-line service.
Almost all the previously excepted charities can take advantage of this enhanced service and we are strongly encouraging them to do so.
- we either have insufficient information to make a decision as to whether the legal requirements for charitable status have been satisfied; or
- the governing document (particularly the objects clause) is not in a form that meets the legal requirements.
Please note that some minor changes to the on-line system and to the paper form will be introduced in early October. These will reflect the new £100,000 threshold for excepted charities and the new types of governing documents eg Acts of Parliament.
Go to the online registration page.
Once the on-line application has been submitted the system generates a trustee declaration form. This is pre-printed with our reference number and the names of all the trustees.
The trustee declaration needs to be signed by all the trustees and the original signature copy needs to be sent to us via the postal system before we can proceed with the registration.
We have been asked whether the trustees can sign the paper declaration BEFORE the on-line application is submitted. The answer is YES you can, PROVIDED that you hold on to it and return it stapled to the system generated one. This is because the form the system generates provides key information to enable us to link the paper form with the on-line application.
If you want to adopt this second approach you can download the paper form (CC5c) here.
are excepted from the requirement to register as charities by The Charities (Exception from Registration) Regulations 1996 as amended.
This means that although the law recognises them as charities they do not have to have a Registered Charity Number.
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Baptist Union |
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Church in Wales |
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Church of England |
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Congregational Federation |
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Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches |
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Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) |
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General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches |
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Grace Baptist Trust Corporation |
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Methodist Conference |
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Presbyterian Church in Wales (also known as Calvinistic Methodist Church) |
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Religious Society of Friends |
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Strict and Particular Baptists |
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Union of Welsh Independents |
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United Reformed Church |
When the relevant part of the Charities Act 2008 is enacted (anticipated January 2009) then such charities with an income over £100,000 will have a duty to apply for registration unless the Commission issues a written determination to the contrary.
This is a large programme of work for all concerned. So, working in conjunction with the churches, the Charity Commission has started the programme of registrations for those that have an income over £100,000 . The Commission expects to complete this by 1 October 2009.
There will be a review of the Charities Act 2006 in 2011. This may result in the income threshold being reduced. However, until then church charities with an income below £100,000 will continue to be excepted from the requirement to register and so will not have a registered charity number.
You can view the detailed excepted church charity programme here.
In addition to the churches that were excepted from the requirement to register by the Statutory Instrument made in 1996, we know of 5 other groups that were included in the excepting regulations at the time of the 1960 Charities Act but were NOT included in 1996.
These are:
The Office of the Third Sector has made a concession that registrations for these churches can be included within the programme for the excepted church charities. However, the initial concessionary income threshold of £100,000 will NOT apply.
In the context of the Charity Commission’s wider responsibility under the Charities Act 2006 to use its resources in the most efficient, effective, and economic way, we will initially be focusing on registering church charities for these bodies where the income exceeds £25,000.
The exception relating to registered places of worship is widely misunderstood.
The Charities Act 1993 introduced the requirement for all charities with an income in excess of £1000 a year to apply for registration. Therefore a Registered Place of Worship that did not specifically have its working funds included within the property trust should have applied to register its working funds as a charity.
The Charities Act 2006 (Interim changes in the threshold for registration of small charities) Order 2007, which came into force on 23 April 2007, raised the general threshold for registration to £5000 and removed the requirement that charities that have the use or occupation of land or ownership of property that is permanent endowment must register. This effectively removed the exception in respect of Registered Places of Worship.
Therefore:
have a duty to apply for registration if their funds exceed the normal registration threshold of £5000 income per year.
The recent Statutory Instrument extending the current excepting regulations clarified that, where the constituent churches in an LEP are themselves excepted from the requirement to register then the LEP is similarly excepted.
However we anticipate that there are about 80 LEPS with incomes sufficient to trigger the registration requirement. The Commission is in regular contact with the various denominational bodies to agree a way forward. Because there are a number of, as yet unresolved issues, applications for registrations for these should not be submitted at this stage. April 2009 is likely to be the earliest start date for this process.
Those charities concerned with promoting the efficiency of the armed forces which are affected by the changes in charity law will be registered on a phased basis over 18 months. Registration of Royal Navy, Royal Marines and British Army charitable service funds with annual income of £100,000 or more will start from October 2008. Registration of RAF service funds with annual income of £100,000 or more will start in 2009.
The registration of affected service funds is being co-ordinated with each of the individual services. Service fund administrators or trustees requiring further information on the registration process and timetable should get in touch with their respective service contact:
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Royal Navy and Royal Marines |
British Army |
Royal Air Force |
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RN: Fleet Charities Unit |
SA Pensions and Service Funds |
SO2 Service Funds Policy Ground Floor |
Unregistered charities that are concerned with promoting the efficiency of the armed forces and which are not treated as service funds should contact the Armed Forces Charities Unit at the Charity Commission to discuss the registration process. (email: AFSETTaunton@charitycommission.gsi.gov ; Telephone 01823 345472)
We are an excepted church charity but we want to be a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). Does this make any difference to the registration requirement?
The Charity Commission is planning to launch a public consultation about CIO’s during September 2008. We will be seeking and considering responses to this before the new CIO is available and before the model governing documents for CIO’s are finalised. We currently hope that CIO’s will become an option during the spring/summer of 2009.
Where a previously excepted church charity has a duty to apply for registration AND it is not currently governed by an Act of Parliament or Church Measure, we will permit it to delay making the application until towards the end of the allotted time-frame. However, we need to complete the programme of church registration requirements by 1 October 2009. Therefore if there is any delay in the launch of the CIO we may have to revise our position.
Charities choosing to become CIO’s will be required to register and submit annual information to us whatever their income. Neither the £100,000 nor the £5000 income threshold will apply to any church charity that chooses to become a CIO.
Unless a church charity will be entering into substantial contracts, eg because it is engaged in a major building programme, we think there will be little advantage in being a CIO.
When the CIO becomes available there will be a mechanism to enable charities to change their legal form.
We do not want to use the approved governing document for our denomination/umbrella body can we apply to the Charity Commission independently and/or use a different governing document?
This depends on your church affiliation. For some churches eg the Church of England, the Methodists, the URC and the Church in Wales the governing document is defined by statute law. So you cannot have a different one.
In other cases the Charity Commission has devoted a great deal of time to working with the umbrella body or denomination to agree an approved governing document that both:
Those who use the approved governing document, and our on-line method of applying for registration, should find that we handle their application swiftly. We will rarely need to engage in rounds of correspondence because:
If you think the approved governing document does not meet your requirements then, in the first instance, you should discuss this with the national body. They are best placed to advise you whether you can make changes or use a different document.
Our church is an excepted charity and its income is less than £100,000. However, we are frequently asked for our registered charity number and cannot give one. How should we explain why we do not have one, and yet still ensure we can benefit from tax relief?
If your church is affiliated to, or part of a group of churches, that have been excepted from the requirement to register, excepted status will continue until 2012. This is because Statutory Instrument No 2655 of 1 October 2007 extended the exception until 1 October 2012. It is possible that the income threshold of £100,000 may be lowered. This would be as a consequence of the review of the Charities Act 2006 due to take place in 2011.
The effect of this legislation is that your church is not entitled to have a registered charity number. You probably have a number provided to you by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in connection with Gift Aid recoveries. This number is equivalent to a registered charity number in terms of evidence of charitable status.
Our church is currently excepted from the requirement to register. Normally our income is nowhere near £100,000 a year but exceptionally we have recently received a legacy that brings our income over the threshold. Do we have to register and then possibly come off the register?
If a church normally has an income well below that of the excepted charity registration threshold (currently £100,000), but receives a substantial legacy of income that causes the gross income to exceptionally exceed the threshold, then the church charity can apply to the Commission for a written determination. The determination will state that the estimated income for a future year is used as the baseline for assessing whether registration is required. (See Charities Act 2006 Chapter 9 Section 3A (10)) Because the determination is based on the estimate of the likely income in a future year the Charity Commission will not normally give this determination when the general income is steadily increasing and is approaching the £100,000 threshold anyway.