Around 6,700 charities missed last week's deadline to file their annual accounts or annual return with the Charity Commission.
As of 4 February, the Commission's online search tool showed that 17,129 charities are late on filing their annual reports. This is an increase of 6,759 from 30 January, just before the deadline for many charities.
Last year 7,198 charities missed the 31 January deadline. In January 2017 over 10,000 missed the deadline.
Late filers highlighted on register
Every year the Commission runs a public campaign to encourage charities to file on time. At the moment there are over 17,000 charities with overdue documents.
Just over 250 charities with incomes over £1m are late, and 1,544 charities with incomes between £100,000 and £1,000,000 are overdue. 15,330 charities with incomes under £100,000 have not filed their accounts.
Almost half of all charities have a financial year ending on 31 March. Charities with incomes over £25,000 had until 31 January, 10 months after that date, to file financial information with the Charity Commission.
Major charities late in filing their finances include The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Foundation and two branches of Age UK, Age Cymru and Age South Lakeland. Veteran’s charity Combat Stress and English National Ballet’s accounts are also outstanding.
A spokesperson from The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Foundation said that the delay was due to “a technical error” and that they were working with the Commission to rectify it.
Age UK South Lakeland said that the error was due to a change in staffing and that they would be uploading the relevant documents as soon as possible. Combat Stress said that had some issues with the Charity Commission website but as of 4 February have submitted their accounts.
A spokesperson from the English National Ballet said the late filing was “an administrative error”, and filed the reports 4 days late.
Online fundraising platform, Localgiving is also late filing information.
Chris Dormer, managing director of Localgiving said: “We recently had a change of personnel in our finance department, and as a result we needed just a few extra days to check the accounts thoroughly before submitting them: under these unavoidable circumstances, we decided it was more important to get the accounts right, rather than filed precisely on time.”
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Update 8 February
The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Foundation was among a small number of charities affected by a technical glitch. Once the error was fixed its accounts were back dated to prevent the impression that its accounts had been filed late.
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