How do we correct a charity filing we got wrong?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: not covered here — OSCR runs its own, separate correction process. Northern Ireland: not covered here either — CCNI runs its own process.

Which correction route costs more?

The annual return route costs more. When you correct a charity filing with the Charity Commission in England and Wales, the heavier process attaches to the lighter error. Fixing the accounts means a quiet new upload. Fixing the return means a full reset. It can leave a mark on your record that the original filing, made on time, never carried.

A trustee deciding how to correct something deserves to know that before choosing, not after. This page assumes you have filed, through file your accounts or complete the annual return, and found a problem.

Accounts: a quiet re-upload

If you need to update or replace your accounts, you can do this by re-uploading the documents through your My Charity Commission Account. No reset is required. Nothing about the new upload is flagged publicly as a new event.

The annual return: a full reset, and a new public date

Fixing the return itself is a different process. Here is the Commission’s own instruction, word for word. “If you need to change any information that was submitted as part of the annual return, you must apply in writing to request a full reset. After the reset, the charity will need to complete the annual return again and resubmit all required details.”

A single wrong answer means re-entering everything, not editing one field.

What follows from a reset is the thing worth knowing before you start. The Commission puts it this way. “When an annual return is resubmitted, the new submission date will appear on the public register. If the date is after the end of the charity’s financial year, the submission will show as late.”

Take a charity that filed on time, then found a wrong answer and corrected it properly. It can end up publicly marked as a late filer for doing the right thing. Being compliant and appearing compliant are not the same thing here. Weigh that before you decide to request the reset.

For a charitable company: two separate corrections, not one

Where the error is in a charitable company’s accounts, there are two things to consider, not one. Companies House revision under Companies Act 2006 s.454 is optional, not automatic. This is the wording of s.454(1). “If it appears to the directors of a company that— (a) the company’s annual accounts … did not comply with the requirements of this Act, they may prepare revised accounts.”

Revised accounts must be confined to correcting the non-compliance (s.454(2)). Companies House’s own practice is to keep the original on the public file beside the amended version. It is not replaced.

That is a Companies House correction. It does not, on its own, correct what the Commission holds. The accounts still need the separate re-upload to the Commission, set out in the section on accounts. A charitable company with a wrong figure in its accounts faces both routes. One does not replace the other.

How the trustees signed off the first set is covered in approve and sign the accounts.

Is correcting a filing an offence?

No. No offence arises from a correction itself. It is one of the few purely reassuring points in this step, so we state it plainly.

Charities Act 2011 s.173 — the offence covered where you file your accounts — requires that the filing was never made by the deadline at all. Fixing something you already filed does not trigger it, however wrong the first figure was.

Once the fix is made and minuted, you are done. If the Commission is already looking at the charity, see respond to a regulator query or inquiry.

Common mistake: correcting a return without realising it will republish the submission date

Nothing warns you until after it has happened. The new submission date appears on the public register. A date after the financial year end shows as late, even though the original filing was on time.

Common mistake: a charitable company correcting only one of its two filings

The Companies House revision and the Commission re-upload are separate corrections. Fixing one does not fix the other.

Worked example

Saltmarsh Trust files on time in December, then finds in March that one figure in its return was wrong. Correcting the accounts is a silent re-upload, with no reset. Correcting the return requires a written reset request and full re-entry. The new March submission date will then show as late, even though the original December filing was not.