All charities should complete and return the Trustee Update form each year, ensuring that the details that we hold on the charity's trustees are correct.

To enable us to better identify individuals, the Commission has changed slightly the way it holds personal data. We have divided the name field into its constituent parts. This better enables us to compare and identify trustees and correspondents. It should also reduce the number of duplicate entries on the register. If a trustee told us they were S Henry one year and Steven Henry the next, previously we would have captured this as two people. It is hoped that breaking the name into constituent parts and requesting full details, we will only get "Steven Henry" which, when linked to a date of birth, will either be confirmed as an existing individual, or will be someone unknown to us, therefore constituting a new entry.

This is why it is important that you ensure that each trustee has a full set of personal details on the Register including a date of birth.

In the form, we have used the standard terms of Personal Names and Family Names. Personal Names are the same as Christian or given names, while Family Names can be thought of as surnames.

For 2004, we have introduced a section of the Trustee Update Form specifically for those charities that have corporate trustees. This should be completed by those charities whose governing documents state that their trustee is a body corporate e.g. an NHS Trust or Parish Council.

We have tried, wherever possible, to pre-print the forms with the trustee information we hold for each charity. Where this has not been possible, it may be for one of the following reasons:

• We do not hold any trustee information for that charity. If you have not supplied trustee information in the past, it is important that you do this year.
• We have not been able to convert the existing information into the "new" format. If you have given us information in the past that has been incomplete, it may not have been possible to convert and pre-print these details. We apologise for this and ask that you submit the information again.

Download the 2004 Trustee Update Form .