Looking for a Company to Charity Number Lookup

Hi all,

I’m aware I can download Companies House as a bulk data set. In that dataset, Charity Number is not included.

Here is an example of a charity with a charity number.

Alternatively, I can download the charity register here: Full register download

Of the 185k registered charities available in the charity commission data, 34,000 have a companies house company number.

Using the same example, I can find ST DAVID’S HALL COMMUNITY CENTRE in the charity commission data but this company does not have the companies house company number.

Does anyone have access to a lookup of Company Number to Charity number?

Sorry, I’m not aware of any other Company to Charity number resource. Someone else might. I’m just posting this info in case this is useful for someone else searching their way here.

Is your question really “why don’t all the charities have a Companies House number”? You say you know that:

Of the 185k registered charities available in the charity commission data, 34,000 have a companies house company number.

In the Charities Commission data they seem to have a charity_company_registration_number - so you know those 34,000 out of 185,000, right?
In that case - since I presume Companies House simply take the data from the Charities Commission - that’s likely all there is to know I’d imagine?

It would be easy to check - just count them in the Companies House bulk data (all the CE… company numbers). If you find the extra ones there then you can make a lookup yourself (see later). If not then presumably this is all that there are. In that case I’ve no idea why some don’t have an allocated CH number. Maybe Companies House have not imported / processed all the data? Could it be that those are charities where they’ve actually set up a “normal” company specifically (see example *1)? If that’s the case I’ve also no idea who would hold that info or where.

For those where there is a CE… number or a CS… number obviously you can get this either from Charities Commission data or from the API in the companyProfile resource *2. If the Charities Commission didn’t have that info but Companies House did you could just download the Companies House bulk data, skim out all the charities from there (e.g. company codes CE… and CS… etc) and then just set a task to wade through those requesting their Company Profile via the API at the rate-limited 600 requests every 5 min - that’s not too bad.

*1 Example - apologies, this is a Scottish one so not on the Charities Commission I imagine. The MBA. They’re registered as a charity with the OSCR (search here or download - although they don’t seem to have Companies numbers at all):
SC008685
… and there is a “full” company set up:

*2 That’s the external_registration member e.g. English example (there are different England/Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland charities registers):

{
    "company_number" : "CE027680",
    "external_registration_number" : "1197189",
    "type":"charitable-incorporated-organisation"
    "jurisdiction" : "england-wales",
    ...
}

for a Scottish example (same idea as English one):
https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/CS000430
has:

{
  "company_number":"CS000430",
  "jurisdiction":"scotland",
  "type" : "scottish-charitable-incorporated-organisation",
  "external_registration_number" : "SC008652",
  ...
}

That is not (as of 17/02/2022) documented in either the companyProfile documentation:
https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources/companyprofile?v=latest
… OR the Swagger spec e.g.:
https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/api.ch.gov.uk-specifications/swagger-2.0/spec/companyProfile.json#/definitions/companyProfile

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I found some background info on this of possible interest:

Short summary of that info - also note this is not exhaustive and I’m certainly not an expert in this area:

  • Not all charities will appear in Companies House records.

  • There are several different charity / trust / community benefit structures which do appear in Companies House:

  • Charitable company - just a private company (normally limited by guarantee). Presumably whichever charities regulator the charity is registered would hold information on the company number?

  • Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). I believe these are the entries of type charitable-incorporated-organisation and scottish-charitable-incorporated-organisation in the companyProfile resource (with company numbers CE… and CS…) in Companies House.

  • I think the following - certainly the first - may not fall under “charities regulated by e.g. the Charities Commission” but here for reference:

  • Community Interest Companies (CIC) - social enterprises. The companyProfile resource member is_community_interest_company should be set to true for these. Info at the CIC regulator and FAQ here (gov.uk).

  • Industrial and Provident Societies (IPS) - co-operatives, mutual societies and community organisations with type industrial-and-provident-society in the companyProfile resource. Registered via the FCA.

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