The Charity Commission has criticised a charity’s trustees after the organisation failed to file its annual accounts on time for eight consecutive years.
Islamic Education Centre and Mosque, which operates a Muslim place of worship in Sunderland, filed its financial details late every year from 2015-16 to 2022-23.
The regulator’s inquiry report, published this week, says that the charity’s accounts for the year to March 2018 were the longest overdue, filed 1,055 days late.
“This is a prolonged pattern of behaviour which demonstrates serious failings by the trustees to ensure that their charity is accountable, transparent and that they comply with their legal reporting obligations,” it reads.
“Trustees have a legal responsibility to ensure that the appropriate accounting information for the charity is prepared and supplied to the Commission on time in line with statutory requirements.
“The trustees in place at the relevant times failed to do so over a number of years which is misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of the charity.”
A spokesperson for the Islamic Education Centre and Mosque said: “The new trustees of this charity would like to point out it is a charity run totally by volunteers, we accept there have been some serious mistakes made by previous trustees which led to this investigation and report.
“We have worked hard to correct these previous errors but have been let down by accountants on a couple of occasions and we intend to be better organised in future and hope to come through this process in a better position to carry on our work and aims as a charity.”
Orphanage charity reviews governance
The Commission has also published an inquiry report into Children Care Centre, a charity that funds an orphanage in India, which repeatedly failed to file its accounts on time.
It opened an inquiry in 2022 after the charity failed to submit accounts promptly for the financial years from 2017-18 to 2020-21.
The charity regulator found that there was misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration, governance and management of the charity.
The inquiry ordered the charity to review its board, establish a written investment policy and consider the way it records trustees’ decision making.
It found that trustees made good progress against the actions required and kept the inquiry team informed with updates.
The Commission said trustees had implemented changes to improve the governance of the charity as well as compliance with their legal duties.
It said the trustees had filed the outstanding accounts, reviewed the board, appointed an accountancy firm and a law firm to provide ongoing professional advice.
Children Care Centre declined to comment.
