Health charity’s accounts overdue by more than 1,000 days

The Charity Commission has launched an inquiry into the Have A Heart Foundation after multiple failures by the charity to file its accounts and annual returns dating back to 2019.

The Cheshire charity was set up a decade ago to support patients with heart diseases and is to be investigated amid “serious concerns about its financial management”, said the regulator.

But it last filed an annual return, for the reporting year ending December 2019, at the end of December 2020. This was filed over a month late and accounts for this reporting period have still not been filed. These are now overdue by 1,007 days.

Meanwhile its accounts and annual return for the year ending December 2020 are overdue by 642 days and all financial information for the year ending December 2021 is overdue by 277 days.

The charity was also 85 days late filing its annual return for the year ending December 2018.

We’ve opened an inquiry into the Have A Heart Foundation over serious concerns about its financial management.

Read more: https://t.co/OFl9JxpFUg pic.twitter.com/7BhV8DTwPM
— Charity Commission (@ChtyCommission) August 4, 2023

“Despite engagement and guidance from the Commission, the trustees have failed to file any of the charity’s accounts since 2019,” said the regulator.

“The Commission is also concerned about the trustees’ financial record-keeping more widely, and the level of charitable expenditure. It therefore escalated its engagement with the charity to an inquiry.”

The investigation will focus on a failure by trustees to comply with their statutory reporting duties and whether they are complying with their legal responsibilities in running the charity “including compliance with the charity’s governing document”.

Management of conflicts of interest and whether there has been unauthorised benefit to trustees will also be probed.

Its most recently filed accounts show its income was £58,011 and it spent £57,784 for the year ending 31 December 2019. According to the charity register it had two trustees and four volunteers that year.