What does a Northern Ireland charity have to submit each year?
- Timenot established
- CostFree to submit
- Doing itUsually doable yourself
An annual monitoring return with accounts and a trustees' annual report, within 10 months of the year end, beginning with your first full financial year after registration. If your charity was caught by the registration litigation, the Department for Communities has confirmed there is no requirement to file for the past periods.
Do this first
- Gather your annual return data
- start-18 (not yet published)
England and Wales: not applicable — this step is Northern Ireland-only; see Step 7, Complete the annual return. Scotland: not applicable — see Step 8, Complete the OSCR annual return. Northern Ireland: partly researched — the deadline, what must be submitted, and the position on the registration-litigation filing gap are established; the question set on the monitoring return itself, and whether a registration threshold is now in force, are not.
The deadline, and when the duty starts
10 months from the end of your financial year, under s.68(3) of the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008.
The duty begins with your first full financial year after registration. CCNI states this explicitly, and it matters: a part-period between registering and your first year end is not itself caught. A charity registered in October with a March year end does not owe a return for those five months.
You submit the annual monitoring return together with your accounts and trustees’ annual report.
If you were caught by the registration litigation, read this
A large group of Northern Irish charities was registered under decisions later found to be legally defective, and did not file during the years the position was unresolved. Looking at those register entries now, the absence of filings reads like years of default.
It is not. The Department for Communities has stated that there is no legal requirement for those charities to file for the past periods. The Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 validated the earlier registration decisions prospectively for reporting purposes — it did not reach backwards and create a filing duty that had not existed.
The gap traces to a defect in the regulator’s own processes, not to trustee misconduct. If a funder or a new trustee has raised your filing history, that is the answer, and it comes from the Department rather than from us.
The registration threshold is still not settled
A registration threshold for Northern Ireland has been in the process of introduction for some time. The Minister for Communities approved one in the summer of 2025, and CCNI published preparatory material in February 2026.
A figure circulates in the sector. We are not going to repeat it as though it were in force, because no primary source confirms either the figure or a commencement date as at this task. If you are near whatever the margin turns out to be, ask CCNI directly rather than acting on a number you found in a blog post.
How Northern Ireland is actually doing
CCNI publishes compliance data, and it is the most recent of any UK charity regulator. For the year to 31 March 2025, of 6819 returns due, 4739 arrived on time — 69.5%. 816 were late and 1264 were still outstanding when the report was written.
CCNI also reviewed a sample of 153 sets of accounts, issued guidance to 45 charities, and required 10 higher-risk cases to resubmit. Useful context: filing on time puts you in the majority, and the regulator does read what arrives.
Where this page stops
This page stops at the questions on the form and at the registration threshold, in both cases because the honest answer is that we do not know yet.
We have not established the CCNI question set, and we are not going to reconstruct one from guesswork. CCNI publishes a “How to complete the Annual Monitoring Return — 10 Minute Guide”, which is free, short and written by the people who built the form. Start there.
On the registration threshold: the status is unresolved as at this task, and the figure circulating in the sector could not be confirmed against a primary source. CCNI answers enquiries directly, and on a question of whether you must register at all, that call is worth making rather than relying on any third party — including this one.
Common mistake: treating charities that did not file during the registration litigation as non-compliant
Absence of filings looks like default. The Department for Communities states there is no legal requirement for those charities to file for past periods. The gap traces to the regulator’s own governance defect, not trustee misconduct.
What you should have at the end
A submitted CCNI annual monitoring return with accounts and trustees' annual report.
Recording the submission date and reference alongside these documents is what proves, later, that the deadline was met within 10 months.
Common questions
No. The duty begins with your first full financial year after registration, and CCNI says so explicitly. The part-period is not caught.
Not necessarily, and if you were affected by the registration litigation then no. The Department for Communities has stated there is no legal requirement to file for those past periods. The 2022 Act validated the earlier decisions prospectively; it did not create a backdated duty.
The position is unresolved as at this task. A figure circulates in the sector and we could not confirm it against a primary source, so we are not repeating it. Ask CCNI.
In CCNI's own ten-minute guide to completing it. We have not established the question set and would rather say so than invent one.