Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the reasons behind the rise in the number of small charities leaving the Charity Commission's register in 2018; and if he will make a statement.
The Charity Commission for England and Wales has confirmed that for the past three years a total of 12,708 charities with a declared income of less than £1.5M have been removed from the Register of Charities
Year | Charities removed: income less than £1.5M |
2016 | 3,856 |
2017 | 4,069 |
2018 | 4,783 |
One reason for the increased number of charities coming off the register of charities in 2018 is that the Charity Commission undertook a proactive exercise to remove charities that no longer appeared to be in operation.
Overall, the number of registered charities has grown in the last ten years from 160,500 in 2009 to 168,200 in 2019. Applications for registration as a charity have increased by 40% in the past 5 years, reaching a record high of 8,375 applications in 2017-18.