Monitoring Your Charity Commission Record

Every Scout group is a charity, and its trustees are legally responsible for keeping it in good standing with the Charity Commission. Staying on top of that — whether your accounts and annual return are filed on time, whether anything on your public record has moved — usually means remembering to look your group up on the regulator's website. The Charity Register page does it for you: it checks your group's public Charity Commission record once a week and shows you, in plain language, exactly where you stand and whether anything needs your attention.

This article is for trustees and group admins.

Where to find this#

Open Charity Register from the trustee sidebar. Trustees see it in their portal, and group admins can open it too. The page opens straight onto your group's own record.

Monitoring only works once your group's charity number is on file — if it isn't yet, see Setting up monitoring below.

Your status at a glance#

At the top of the page, a single status pill sums up how your group is doing with the Commission — taken straight from the register's own filing status:

A small Changed badge appears next to the status whenever something on your record has moved since the last check.

What the four tabs show#

Your record is organised into four tabs:

When something changes#

Each weekly check compares your current public record with the last one Scoutworks saw. If anything has moved, the Changed badge appears and a short callout at the top of the page tells you exactly what — so you find out early rather than months later. It watches the things that matter for governance:

• Your charity name, and whether you're still on the register (a removal shows up here)
• Your filing status — for example, slipping from up to date to overdue
• Income and spending
• Your trustees
• Any formal regulatory action by the Commission

It also flags serious situations the moment they appear on the register. If the register records the charity as insolvent, in administration, with an interim manager appointed, or a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation) being dissolved, a red financial distress banner sits at the very top of the page — and it stays there for as long as the register shows it, not just the week it first appears.

If a weekly check can't complete — for example the charity number doesn't match any record, or the Commission's service is unavailable — a red Last check failed notice appears in place of the change callout, explaining what went wrong so you can put it right (most often a mistyped charity number).

Setting up monitoring#

Monitoring needs your group's charity number on file. If it isn't recorded yet, the page shows a Charity number not set up message with a Set up charity number button that takes you to your group settings. Once the number is saved, the first check runs and your record appears.

Group admins record the number. See Charity Registration for the step-by-step, including the look-up tool that finds your number from the group's name.

Keeping it current#

The check runs automatically once a week, so the page stays up to date on its own. The footer shows when it was last checked — Checked 3 days ago, for example. If you've just recorded your charity number, or you simply want today's figures, group admins can click Refresh to check straight away (trustees can view the page but only group admins can refresh it). The View on Charity Commission link opens your official entry on the regulator's own site if you want to see the full record there.

England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland#

Automatic weekly checking covers the Charity Commission register for England & Wales. If your group is registered with OSCR (Scotland) or the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, your charity number is still stored — but because those regulators publish on separate sites, Scoutworks doesn't check them for you yet. Instead of the full record and tabs, you'll see a note that automatic monitoring isn't available, showing your stored charity number and which regulator it's with. You'll still need to look your group up on the regulator's own website.

What's next#

• Getting Started as a Trustee — the wider governance and oversight tools for trustees.
• Charity Registration — how to record your group's charity number so it can be monitored.
• Monitoring Charity Register Status Across Your District — the district-wide version of this view, for district admins and trustees.