What do we have to do, and when, in our first year?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: covered, and different — the deadlines themselves are different, and there is a further duty to send the external scrutiny report to the regulator separately. Both are owned and explained in full by the reporting hub, not detailed on this assembly page. Northern Ireland: covered, and the deadlines differ again, owned by the same reporting hub.

Two income thresholds: registration and the annual return

A compliance calendar is a single list of every filing deadline the charity faces, each with a date and a named owner. Build your charity compliance calendar around the regulator you answer to: the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI. Then add Companies House, HMRC and the ICO.

It pulls together four earlier steps. They are record your registration details, register with HMRC for tax status, hold your first board meeting and set your financial year end. The England and Wales figures come first here. Scotland and Northern Ireland differ, and each has its own deadlines.

Two different thresholds are easy to mix up. This calendar exists to prevent that kind of mistake. Registration itself is compulsory above £5,000 of gross income.

Whether you owe an annual return at all is another question. It is tested against a different, higher figure: gross income not exceeding £10,000 — no annual return required. The reporting hub’s annual return questions cover who files one and what it asks.

A charity can be well above the registration threshold. Yet in a given year it can still sit below the annual return trigger. Put both figures on the calendar as what they are, not as the same number doing two jobs.

In England and Wales, the filing deadline for the annual report and accounts is 10 months from your financial year end. That is the anchor date everything else on the charity side of the calendar hangs off.

Companies House deadlines for a charitable company

A charitable company answers to Companies House as well as to the charity regulator. The two work to their own timetables. Both count from your year end, but they do not land on the same day. The Companies House accounts deadline is 9 months from the end of the accounting reference period.

That is shorter than the charity regulator’s own deadline above. So put it on the calendar first. Do not assume you have longer for it.

Missing either has its own consequences. And “we filed with the Commission” is not an answer to a missed Companies House deadline, or the other way round. The reporting hub’s step to file with Companies House covers what goes in.

The ICO data protection fee

Registering with the ICO and paying its annual data protection fee is not a charity-law deadline at all. But it belongs on the same calendar, because it is as easy to miss. The step to pay the ICO fee or confirm your exemption covers who has to pay.

For a charity the fee is the tier 1 fee, £52 a year, whatever its size. The step to write your data protection policy covers the policy side. This calendar’s job is only to make sure the fee itself has a date and an owner.

Scotland and Northern Ireland: their own deadlines

The deadlines above are the England and Wales figures. A Scottish or Northern Irish charity’s own deadlines are different. Scotland’s are shorter. Scotland also has an extra duty: send the external scrutiny report to the regulator as its own item.

Northern Ireland’s differ again. The reporting hub’s step to build your annual compliance calendar owns every one of these figures. It covers each nation in turn. The real dates for this calendar should come from there, not from the England and Wales figures here.

Independent examination or audit: plan it from day one

Your first year’s accounts may need an independent examination or an audit. That question belongs on this calendar from day one, because arranging either takes a long time.

The money hub’s step to determine your external scrutiny requirement owns the question. It also covers how far ahead to arrange it. Work it out before the year end, not after it has passed.

With this calendar built, the charity is set up and its first year is mapped. From then on, the reporting hub’s annual compliance calendar takes over as the list you keep current.

Common mistake: a charitable company tracking only one set of deadlines

It feels like one body, so one calendar seems enough. A charitable company answers to two bodies on two timetables.

The Companies House deadline is the shorter of the two. Missing either has its own consequences. Meeting one does not excuse missing the other.

Worked example

Saltmarsh Trust is a charitable company that has just registered. It builds its first-year calendar from the first-year compliance calendar template. It puts:

• the shorter Companies House deadline first
• the charity regulator’s own deadline next
• the ICO fee renewal on its own line
• the external scrutiny arrangement, flagged early enough to book someone

That makes two regulators, two deadlines, one ICO fee and one calendar. Every date has a named owner, agreed at the board meeting that adopted the calendar.