SORP 2026 is live — your annual report now has to show your volunteers

If your charity's accounting year started on or after 1 January 2026, you are already inside the first year of the new Charities SORP 2026 — the rulebook for how charities in England and Wales prepare their annual report and accounts. It was published in October 2025, and it changes what your trustees' report has to say about the two things most community organisations record worst: volunteers and impact.

What changed

Two changes matter most for the organisations we work with:

• Volunteer contributions go in the trustees' report. The new SORP expects charities to describe the contribution volunteers make — and advisers are telling clients to quantify it with hours and roles where they can (Bishop Fleming's summary is a good plain-English rundown). If nobody logged the hours, there is nothing to disclose.
• Impact reporting comes in for every charity, not just the big ones. The trustees' report is expected to say what difference the work made — not just list the activities (Support Cambridgeshire's guide covers this well). That means outcomes: what changed for the people you worked with.

The SORP also introduces a three-tier framework based on income — up to £500,000, £500,001 to £15m, and over £15m — with disclosure building at each tier. And separately, from 30 September 2026 the accruals accounts threshold for non-company charities rises from £250,000 to £500,000 (GOV.UK has the detail), which takes some smaller charities out of the heavier regime altogether.

One accounting point worth getting right

The accounting treatment of volunteer time has a wrinkle that catches people out. General volunteer time is not recognised as income in the accounts — but donated professional services, like a solicitor or accountant giving their time free, generally are, valued at what you would have paid for them. The narrative disclosure of volunteer contribution in the trustees' report sits alongside that, not instead of it. Your accountant or independent examiner will steer the accounts side; your job is to have the record they need.

What to have in place before your year end

• A running log of volunteer hours — who gave time, in what role, on what. Reconstructing a year of volunteering in March is guesswork; logging it as it happens takes two minutes a session.
• A costed view of what that time is worth — recognised proxy values turn hours into a £ figure your report and your funding bids can both use, with the rate and source stated.
• Outcome evidence, not just activity counts — a simple before-and-after measure, like distance travelled on confidence or readiness, is exactly the kind of impact evidence the new trustees' report is asking for.

None of this needs a new system or a consultant. It needs the habit of recording the work as it happens — which is the same habit that strengthens every funding bid you write.