Prepare a trustees' annual report for your charity
What to put in your trustees' annual report, depending on what type of accounts your charity prepares.
Applies to England and Wales
About trustees’ annual reports
Your trustees’ annual report helps people understand what your charity does, particularly your charity’s beneficiaries and potential funders.
You must write a trustees’ annual report if your charity is registered in England or Wales. Along with your accounts, the report tells people:
- about your charity’s work, achievements and impact
- where your money comes from
- how you’ve spent your money in the past year
The report must be dated and signed by one or more trustees who have been authorised to do this by the other trustees. Read about using electronic signatures.
Charitable companies must also prepare a directors’ report, which can be combined with the trustees’ annual report. Medium and large charitable companies must prepare a strategic report.
Reports for charities preparing receipts and payment accounts
If your charity prepares receipts and payment accounts, you can prepare a simple report. Read guidance or use this accounts tool if you need help to understand what accounts to prepare.
You can decide how you present your report, but you must meet all the legal requirements set out below. You can put more detail into your trustees’ annual report if you want to.
The report must specify the financial year to which it relates.
Reference and administrative details
Your report must include:
- the name under which the charity is registered, and any other names the charity uses
- the charity’s registration number
- the address of the charity’s main or head office
- the names of all the charity’s trustees on the date the report was approved, or who served as a trustee in the reporting period. Where there are more than 50 trustees, you must give the names of at least 50 trustees including the charity’s chair and treasurer
- where a charity has a corporate trustee, the names of the directors of the corporate trustee on the date the report was approved
Read about getting Charity Commission authority not to provide the names and addresses of trustees.
Structure, governance and management
Your report must:
- say what the charity’s governing document is. For example, trust deed dated (give the date), constitution dated (give the date)
- explain if any person or organisation is entitled to appoint trustees. Give the name of that person or organisation
Objectives and activities
Your report must:
- set out the charity’s purposes
- describe the charity’s main activities in the year that have helped it carry out its purposes for the public benefit
- include a statement as to whether the charity’s trustees have had regard to the Commission’s public benefit guidance. Read guidance about reporting on public benefit
Achievement and performance
You must give a summary of the charity’s main achievements during the year. This could include:
- how your charity’s work has made a difference to its beneficiaries
- if the charity’s work has provided any wider benefits to society as a whole
A financial review
You must:
- explain any policy the charity has for determining the level of reserves
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state the amount of those reserves and why they are held
- when determining the level of reserves identify:
- any designated funds. These are funds set aside for particular projects, but where there is no legal requirement to spend the funds on that project
- the amount and purpose of any material commitments and planned expenditure
- where any funds of the charity are in deficit, explain how the deficit occurred and the steps you are taking to remove the deficit
If you do not have a reserves policy you should include a statement confirming this, with the reasons for not having a policy. Read guidance about reserves.
Funds held as a holding trustee on behalf of others
This section only applies to charities that acted as a holding trustee. A holding trustee is appointed to hold property for a charity. It is not a charity trustee, and can only act on the lawful instructions of the charity trustees regarding the property they hold on behalf of the charity.
A charity that has acted as holding trustee during the reporting period must disclose in the trustees’ annual report:
- a description of the assets, classes, or categories, of assets which they hold in this capacity
- the name and purposes of the charity (or charities) on whose behalf the assets are held and how this activity falls within the holding charity’s purposes
- details of the arrangements for safe custody and segregation of such assets from the charity’s own assets
You must send a copy of the report to the Commission if:
- your charity is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)
- your charity is a trust or unincorporated association and its income is over £25,000
- we ask for it
Upload a copy of your trustees’ annual report when you send your annual return to the Charity Commission.
We will publish your report and accounts on our website. Read guidance about including personal information in your charity’s annual report.
Reports for charities preparing accruals accounts
The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) gives a framework for charity accounting and reporting for charities preparing accruals accounts.
For financial years starting on or before 31 December 2025, if your charity is required to or chooses to prepare accruals accounts, you must prepare a trustees’ annual report that complies with the Charities SORP 2019.
For financial years starting on or after 1 January 2026, if your charity is required to or chooses to prepare accruals accounts, you must prepare a trustees’ annual report that complies with the Charities SORP 2026.
Read guidance or use this accounts tool if you need help to understand what accounts to prepare.
The Charities SORP 2026 requirements are set out under the following headings:
- Objectives and activities
- Achievements and performance
- Financial review
- Plans for future periods
- Structure governance and management
- Reference and administrative details
- Sustainability
- Exemptions from disclosure
- Funds held as a holding trustee
The level of detail in your report will depend on which SORP tier your charity is in.
See the Charities SORP 2026 for full details.
Information on fundraising practices
If your charity must have its accounts audited, your report must also include information on fundraising. It must state:
- the fundraising approach taken by the charity or by anyone acting on its behalf
- whether a professional fundraiser or commercial participator carried out any fundraising activities
- whether the charity is registered with the Fundraising Regulator and commits to complying with the Code of Fundraising Practice (‘the Code’)
- whether any person or organisation acting on behalf of the charity subscribes to the Code
- whether the charity, or by any person or organisation acting on its behalf, has failed to comply with the Code. Give details of that failure
- whether the charity monitored the fundraising activities of any person or organisation acting on its behalf and, if so, how
- the number of complaints received by the charity, or by a person or organisation acting on its behalf, about its fundraising
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what the charity has done to protect vulnerable people and other members of the public from behaviour which:
- is an unreasonable intrusion on a person’s privacy
- is unreasonably persistent
- places undue pressure on a person to give money or other property
You must send a copy of the report to the Commission if:
- your charity is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)
- your charity is a trust, unincorporated association or company and its income is over £25,000
- we ask for it
Upload a copy of your trustees’ annual report when you send your annual return to the Charity Commission.
We will publish your report and accounts on our website. Read guidance about including personal information in your charity’s annual report.
Report on your charity’s public benefit
Your report must include information on how your charity has carried out your charity’s purposes for the public benefit.
This helps people, including funders and beneficiaries, to understand why your charity does what it does.
If your charity has a gross annual income of £500,000 or less, you can choose how you report on this. But as a minimum you need to say:
- what your charity’s charitable purposes are
- what your charity has done during the year to carry out those purposes for the public benefit
- that you have taken the Commission’s public benefit guidance into account when making any decision it is relevant to
If your charity has a gross annual income over £500,000 you will need to provide extra information. The level of detail in your report will depend on what SORP tier your charity is in.
See the Charities SORP 2026 for full details.
Including personal information in your annual report and accounts
The Charity Commission publishes charity annual reports and accounts on its register, and they are accessible to everyone. The Commission cannot remove personal data and can only redact data in very limited circumstances.
You must comply with UK GDPR rules on publishing personal information. Check carefully that any personal data you include in your accounts and annual report is necessary, fully justified and not excessive.
See the Commission’s annual return privacy notice for information on what personal data to include in your annual return and accounts and how the Charity Commission processes this.
Using electronic signatures
An electronic signature can be a typed or a scanned version of a handwritten signature.
Check what your charity’s governing document says about using handwritten or electronic signatures.
If it does not say anything, you can use electronic signatures for documents like balance sheets, accounts, trustees’ annual reports and the independent examiner’s report.
This includes copies you keep, and copies (of accounts and annual reports) you send to the Commission.
Further guidance
Find out what type of accounts to prepare.
Find out what information you need to send to the Charity Commission.
Updates to this page
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Guidance has been updated to reflect the introduction of the Charities SORP 2026 which applies to accounting and reporting years starting on or after 1 January 2026.
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Guidance has been updated to reflect the introduction of SORP 2026 which applies to accounting years starting on or after 1 January 2026.
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First published.