Charities in Default of Submission of Annual Returns or Accounts
Charities entered into the Scottish Charity Register are required to submit an
Annual Return and accounts to OSCR. Charities with an annual gross income
of £25,000 or above are also required to submit a Supplementary Monitoring
Return.
These documents must be submitted to OSCR within:
-
10 months of the financial year end for accounting periods that start before
1st April 2006, or
-
9 months of the financial year end for accounting periods that start on or
after 1st April 2006.
Where these documents have not been received by the deadline OSCR will take the
following action:
1. Immediately after the deadline for submission a charity?s individual entry
on the Scottish Charity Register will indicate that the Annual Return is
"overdue".
2. Ten weeks after the deadline the Annual Return Status of the charity?s
entry in the Scottish Charity Register will change from
?active?
to
?passed to compliance? to indicate that
the charity has been referred to the Compliance Support team.
3. Charities that have still not provided an Annual Return, including the
Supplementary Monitoring Return if appropriate, and / or accounts within 6
months of the deadline for submission will be listed as
defaulting
charities and can be located from this page. They can be found by
searching for any of the following:
-
The charity?s name
-
The charity's Scottish charity number
-
The local authority area that is either the main operating
area for the charity, or is where the principle office of the charity is
located.
Defaulting charities are added to this page monthly.
Charities will be removed from this page once the required documents have been
received, checked and passed as complete. Please note that this
validation process may take several working days. The Annual Return
Status of the charity?s entry in the Scottish Charity Register will then change
back to ?active?.
Consequences of continued non-submission of the required documents
Under section 45 of the Charities and Trustees Investment (Scotland) Act 2005,
OSCR has powers to appoint an accountant to prepare accounts for a
charity. Should OSCR make use of this power, the charity's trustees would
be personally liable for any costs incurred by OSCR and the expenses of the
person of preparing the accounts.
Charities that do not provide OSCR with the required documents within 12 months
of the deadline for submission may be considered for removal from the Scottish
Charity Register.