What can we do while we are waiting to be registered as a charity?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the risk is shaped differently, and arguably wider — calling yourselves a charity at all while unregistered is treated as a representation that you are registered — see below. Northern Ireland: the same misrepresentation risk as England and Wales, compounded by a registration queue that, as at 8 September 2026, is not currently moving — see below.

What you may and must not do before registration

Fundraising before registration is lawful, as long as you never claim to be a registered charity. Most other work can go ahead too. That holds in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, whichever of the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI you are waiting for.

If you have not applied yet, do that first. The steps are apply to register in England and Wales, in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. For the short version, read what you can do while your application is pending. The trustees should decide once what the group will and will not do, and minute it.

Most advice about the waiting period is written to reassure: “don’t worry, you can still do most things.” A decision is more useful than a mood. The group has a short list of things it must not do and a longer list of things it may do. A CIO is different in kind, because the body does not exist yet at all.

Must not. Until the number has arrived, do not describe the group as a “registered charity”. The same goes for a “charity registered in England and Wales” (or Scotland, or Northern Ireland), or any equivalent form of words.

A later step, show your charity status on documents, covers in full the duty to show your registered status once you are registered. It also covers what has to carry it. The point here is narrower and comes first.

Before registration, the group has no right to say it. If you are forming a CIO, do not open a bank account, sign a lease, or take on staff in the CIO’s own name. There is no body yet to hold any of those.

May. Accept donations into an account held properly for the structure you are forming. A CIO has its own rule for this, set out in the CIO section of this page. Apply to funders whose rules accept a constituted but unregistered group.

Describe yourselves honestly and exactly: “a charitable trust applying for registration with the Charity Commission”, for instance. Do not claim a status you do not yet have. But do not stay silent about your position either.

Keep preparing your Gift Aid evidence and your application to register with HMRC for tax status. In most cases, though, you cannot submit the HMRC application until the regulator has registered you.

Minute it. Record these points:

• what was decided
• who is authorised to accept money or sign anything on the group’s behalf in the meantime
• what the group will say about its own status if asked

That record is what this step exists to produce.

The offence that applies: claiming registered status

In England and Wales, the offence for this period is in Charities Act 1992 s.63(1). The offence is soliciting money while representing that an unregistered body is a registered charity.

Founders looking for the rule often reach for Charities Act 2011 s.39 instead. That section sets the duty to state registered charity status on solicitation documents, cheques and invoices. They find nothing there that helps, because s.39 and its offence at s.41 are duties on charities that are already registered.

Before registration there is nothing to disclose. So the risk in this period is not a failure to disclose. It is the opposite: claiming something that is not yet true. The step in this hub on putting your charity number on your documents covers the full duty once you are registered.

The funding hub owns s.63(1), in its step on how to use a professional fundraiser or commercial participator. It is cited here, not restated. Verbatim:

“Where— (a) a person solicits money or other property for the benefit of an institution in association with a representation that the institution is a registered charity, and (b) the institution is not such a charity, he shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fifth level on the standard scale.”

Three things follow. There is no mental element. The offence is complete once someone solicits with that representation and the institution is not on the register. What the person soliciting believed does not matter, subject only to the defence below.

The fine is not capped at level 5 in practice. For offences committed on or after 12 March 2015, the fine is unlimited. That is the effect of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 s.85(1). And there is a defence, in s.63(1A).

It reads, verbatim:

“it shall be a defence for the accused to prove that he believed on reasonable grounds that the institution was a registered charity.”

The trap here is not deliberate fraud. It is an unregistered, excepted or exempt charity printing “registered charity” on an appeal before the number has arrived. Or it is a Scottish or Northern Irish charity doing the same while soliciting in England and Wales.

Scotland reaches the same problem from another angle. The risk is arguably wider there.

The rule sits in Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 s.13(1). It reads, verbatim:

“A body entered in the Register may refer to itself as a ‘charity’, a ‘charitable body’, a ‘registered charity’ or a ‘charity registered in Scotland’.”

Section 13(3)–(4) then deem the use of any of those words to be a representation that the body is registered. So in Scotland, calling yourselves a charity at all while unregistered engages the same misrepresentation. That is so even when you are not soliciting money. The narrow s.14 exception applies only to a body set up elsewhere that has not yet met the cross-border trigger.

Northern Ireland’s disclosure duty (Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 s.19) has the same shape as the England and Wales s.39 duty. It applies only once you are registered, with no income threshold. This pass did not find out whether Northern Ireland has a direct match for the s.63(1) offence of soliciting while unregistered. Do not assume it does.

Why a CIO does not exist until it is registered

A CIO is not just unregistered before it registers. It does not exist as a legal person at all. Charities Act 2011 s.210(1) says, verbatim:

“Upon the registration of the CIO in the register of charities, it becomes by virtue of the registration a body corporate.”

Registration does not recognise a CIO that already exists. It creates it.

Compare an unincorporated association or trust. It exists from the moment its trustees adopt the governing document. A charitable company, too, exists once it is incorporated at Companies House. A CIO is the one structure where “waiting to be registered” and “not existing yet” are the same fact.

The Act foresees the next problem and solves it. A body that does not exist cannot hold a bank account in its own name. Yet the application asks for account details.

Under s.210(2), property held by the applicants “on trust for the charitable purposes of the CIO (when incorporated) … becomes vested in the CIO upon its registration.” The founders hold funds, including a bank account, on trust for the intended CIO. That property vests in the CIO automatically the moment it is registered, with no further transfer step.

A separate question is whether a given bank will in practice open an account on that basis. This page does not answer it. The legal route itself is set in statute and is sound.

Applying to funders and HMRC while you wait

Several major open grant programmes let you apply before you are registered. They accept a constituted group or club with a written constitution and enough independent committee members. “You need a charity number to get funding” is a common belief in the sector. It is not a general rule.

The National Lottery Community Fund’s main small-grants programme is among them. Registered charity status is not required at all. Waiting for the number before you approach any funder can cost months for no legal reason.

Suppose your income is below the England and Wales registration threshold, and you have not needed to register at all. A separate question then arises, and it is unresolved. The question is whether you can still register by choice, for instance because a funder insists on a charity number.

The statute reads as a right. Charities Act 2011 s.30(3) provides that a charity within the relevant income band “must, if it so requests, be registered in the register”. But the Commission’s own published guidance treats voluntary registration as for the Commission to decide. The guidance says the Commission “will only consider applications in exceptional circumstances,” and it gives this funder case as its example of one.

The research behind this page did not settle whether the statutory wording is in force in the form it appears. Nor did it settle whether the Commission’s practice conflicts with it. Tell a founder in this position what the Commission’s published practice is. Do not tell them they have a right to registration on demand.

HMRC recognition is the step that unlocks Gift Aid. For a body that must register, it comes strictly after the regulator registers you, once you are entitled to apply. It does not run at the same time. HMRC’s guidance says:

“if a body is required to register with a charity regulator it must do so before applying to HMRC for recognition as a charity for tax purposes.”

The exceptions are worth knowing.

A body that is excepted or exempt from the regulator’s duty to register may apply to HMRC directly. A body the regulator refuses to register may also still apply directly to HMRC. HMRC forms its own view of charitable status for tax purposes. So if the regulator refuses you, that does not automatically end the tax route.

Northern Ireland: a longer wait, and Gift Aid with it

Northern Ireland adds to the usual waiting period. There, you do not start by applying directly at all. It starts with an Expression of Intent.

CCNI then calls groups forward from that queue in stages. As at 8 September 2026, CCNI has paused calling new groups forward while it upgrades its online systems. CCNI had not published a confirmed end date when this page was checked.

You cannot seek HMRC recognition until the regulator has registered you. So a Northern Irish group in a paused call-forward queue is also outside Gift Aid for exactly as long. The tax hub explains how Gift Aid works for when that wait ends.

That is a longer and costlier wait than the usual position in Great Britain. Say so plainly to a Northern Irish founder, rather than leave them to find out.

What to expect, and what nobody publishes

While a decision is pending, the regulator’s own service standards give a rough sense of scale. They are not a promise. The explainer on what it costs and how long it takes sets them side by side.

In England and Wales, the standard is 30 working days. In Scotland, it is 6 months. The step on applying in Northern Ireland covers its own standard, and the call-forward queue in front of it.

No one publishes how long HMRC recognition itself takes once you are entitled to apply. HMRC sets no service standard for it.

So for none of the three nations can the total wait be worked out from published sources. The total is the regulator’s decision plus HMRC recognition on top.

A founder may ask “how long until we can claim Gift Aid”. Tell them plainly that no one can work out the total. Do not give an estimate the research does not support.

With the minute made, you are ready for the next step: respond to regulator queries if the regulator comes back to you.

Common mistake: printing “registered charity” before the number arrives

The application is in and everyone is confident it will succeed. The print run or website launch is already booked. Printing “registered charity” now is still a misrepresentation. Where money is being solicited, it also engages the separate criminal offence above.

Here is what founders rarely expect. The disclosure duty and its offence apply only once you are registered. So the problem beforehand is not failing to disclose. It is claiming something untrue.

Common mistake: a CIO’s founders opening a bank account, signing a lease or taking on staff in the CIO’s own name

Every other structure exists before it registers. So founders assume a CIO does too. A CIO does not exist until the regulator registers it.

Registration creates it. Until then there is no body to contract, hold property or employ anyone. The applicants act in their own names, on trust for the CIO, and say so.

Common mistake: waiting for registration before approaching any funder

Major open grant programmes accept constituted groups that are not yet registered. You can accept donations throughout. What you cannot claim is Gift Aid. That is only because HMRC recognition comes strictly after the regulator registers you.

Common mistake: applying to HMRC in parallel with the regulator to save time

Running both applications at once looks like a shortcut, and nothing on the regulator’s own forms says not to. But HMRC will not accept it if your body must register.

The two run in series, not in parallel. The exception is a body that is excepted or exempt from the regulator’s duty. Such a body may go straight to HMRC.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO’s founders had sent in the registration application and were waiting for a decision. The CIO did not yet exist as a body corporate.

In the meantime the founders opened a bank account in their own names, held on trust for the CIO once incorporated. They used it to bank the donations that had started to come in. In writing they called the group “Tollgate Youth, a group applying to register as a charitable incorporated organisation”, never a registered charity.

The founders also applied to a funder whose rules expressly accepted a constituted but unregistered group. They did not sign the lease on their planned premises or make any job offer until the CIO was registered. The trustees minuted all of this at a single meeting. The minute recorded what the group would do, what it would not do, and who was authorised to sign anything in the meantime.