Share your feedback on improvements to the Annual Return
All charities in Scotland must complete an OSCR Annual Return and file this with the charity’s annual report and accounts using our OSCR Online system. The Annual Return allows OSCR to gather information about what is happening within a charity. We then use this information to help us with our regulatory work.
In line with the priorities set out in our new Corporate Strategy, we intend to make improvements to the Annual Return process, and to the support we provide to charities throughout the submission process. As part of this, we would like to gather feedback from charities and trustees, and those who support charities to complete their Annual Return, before the proposed upgrades are introduced.
The proposed improvements to the Annual Return process will mean:
- There will be helpful pop-up information to support correct completion of the Annual Return.
- We will provide feedback to charities in response to their submission where the answers to the Annual Return questions indicate a potential issue that the charity trustees need to consider.
- Additional information about each charity will be published on the Scottish Charity Register. This will be:
- A description provided by the charity of the activities it undertakes
- Number of charity trustees
- Number of volunteers
- Number of staff
To help us provide feedback to charities we need to ask all charities questions about the governance of the charity. This means there will be more questions for some charities to answer. The Annual Return should not be difficult to complete for anyone who understands how the charity operates.
Asking more questions will allow us to provide charity trustees with guidance which will be useful to them to ensure they meet their legal duties, and the charity is well run. It also allows OSCR to identify where education and guidance is required and to identify situations where we may need to take regulatory action.
Some of the questions we ask may change from year to year. This will allow us to respond to improvements that charities make and the changing environment that charities operate in.
More information about the changes that we are going to make is published in the Annual Return Feedback document. This includes a copy of the new Annual Return questions.
Please provide your thoughts and feedback to us by 6 October 2023 – your contribution will help us to refine the changes we want to make to ensure that the end result is positive for both charities and OSCR.
You can submit your feedback by email to feedback@oscr.org.uk or by post to:
OSCR
2nd Floor
Quadrant House
9 Riverside Drive
Dundee
DD1 4NY
More information: