Governance Code Compliance – A Note on Reporting

Towards the end of 2020, the Charities Regulator published a guidance note explaining how registered charities will report on their compliance with the Charities Governance Code to the Charities Regulator this year. As you are all aware, 2021 is the first year that charities will report on their compliance with the Code. Many charities have already started to prepare their annual report, and it is important to note that only charities that have completed their governance code journey will have their declaration made public on the register from that date.

The Charities Regulator is proposing to use a system of three alternate declarations (A, B and C) to indicate an organisation’s progress on the governance code journey. The compliance status of charities appearing on the Register of Charities (“the Register”) will depend on the declaration submitted on the Annual Report filed by each charity during 2021 as follows:

• Any charity which declares on its Annual Report filed in 2021 that it is in compliance with the Code, (Declaration A), will have that declaration publicly displayed on the Register from the date that the Annual Report is filed. This means that charities that have worked to ensure that they are compliant with the Code since it was launched in November 2018 will have that reflected on the Register during 2021.
• The compliance status of any charity that declares on its Annual Report filed during 2021 that it is in partial compliance with the Code, (Declaration B), will not be publicly visible on the Register, unless that charity specifically requests that the declaration is shown along with the reason for partial compliance. This will allow any charity that has made progress towards being fully compliant with the Code, but which may be restricted from being in full compliance for some reason that is close to being resolved, to highlight this on the Register.
• The compliance status of any charity that declares on its Annual Report filed in 2021 that it is has not started implementing the Code and is not in compliance, (Declaration C), will not be visible on the Register. It is also envisaged that it will be possible for charities to update their status on the Register in relation to their compliance with the Code following the submission of their Annual Report in 2021. This will facilitate charities who complete their journey to full compliance with the Code subsequent to the submission of their 2021 Annual Report to have this reflected on the Register.

This declaration will become an important source of assurance for users of the CRA website be they funders, members of the public and government departments. We encourage charities to make every effort between now and the standard filing deadline in October to complete their compliance journey.

The declarations above are taken from the Charities Regulator’s Charities Governance Code – Reporting on Compliance in 2021