BOOKTRUST

Registered charity 313343 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register · Wikidata: Q4943312 · Wikipedia · also known as BOOK TRUST, NATIONAL BOOK LEAGUE

Reading changes lives. Booktrust ensures all children and families have the opportunity to enjoy and be confident in their reading. We provide expertise for parents and professionals to make quality choices of reading for children. We engage with communities in the promotion of reading. And we advocate for national and local policies to recognise the social and economic importance of reading.

Objects

TO PROMOTE ENCOURAGE FOSTER OR STRENGTHEN THE HABIT OF READING AND THE WIDER AND MORE GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF BOOKS OF BY AND AMONG ALL PEOPLE.

Area of benefit: NOT DEFINED

The charity’s charitable objects and area of benefit, quoted from its governing document as held on the Charity Commission register.

Causes: Education/training · Arts/culture/heritage/science · website · Get email alerts

Registered contact address: Leeds, Yorkshire and The Humber, England (from the postcode on the register)

Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that total income increased to £12.4m while total expenditure rose to £12.5m, resulting in a planned operating deficit of £0.1m. The charity holds unrestricted funds of £6.2m, which is significantly above its stated minimum reserve requirement of £4.5m, and free reserves of £2.6m, indicating strong liquidity and financial stability.

Automated summary of the FY2025 accounts; the evidenced findings below carry the verbatim passages.

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by Sayer Vincent LLP. Discloses 3 of 6 completeness components.

Policies the charity declares

In its annual return the charity told the Commission that it has the policies listed below. This is self-declared: it is not verified by the Commission or by this site, and it is not evidence of how a policy works in practice.

• Bullying and harassment policy and procedures
• Campaigns and political activity policy and procedures
• Complaints handling
• Complaints policy and procedures
• Conflicting interests
• Engaging external speakers at charity events policy and procedures
• Financial reserves policy and procedures
• Internal charity financial controls policy and procedures
• Internal risk management policy and procedures
• Investing charity funds policy and procedures
• Investment
• Paying staff
• Risk management
• Safeguarding policy and procedures
• Safeguarding vulnerable beneficiaries
• Serious incident reporting policy and procedures
• Social media policy and procedures
• Trustee conflicts of interest policy and procedures
• Trustee expenses policy and procedures

From the charity’s annual return (Part A, self-declared)

Answers and figures the charity gave in Part A of its annual return to the Charity Commission. They are self-declared: not verified by the Commission or by this site. Only positive answers and figures are listed; items not listed are simply not shown.

Source: this charity’s annual returns on the Charity Commission register.

Corporate structure

• Registered company of the charity Companies House 00210012

Public fundraising profile: JustGiving — BookTrust (matched by registered charity number).

Leadership, per the charity’s website

• Ruthann Hughes — Director of Research and Impact (source)

Listed on the charity’s own website when we last crawled it; roles may have changed. Pay-band disclosures above are anonymous statutory disclosures and are not attributed to any named individual.

Company officers (Companies House)

Current officers of the charity’s own company per the Companies House register, cross-checked against the Charity Commission trustee list by name. A director not on the trustee list is usually a timing or naming difference between the two registers — check both records before drawing conclusions.

• CROCKER, Steven James — director, appointed 01/03/2026not on trustee list
• POULTNEY, Edward David — director, appointed 01/09/2024on trustee list
• BROOMÉ, Ellen Kristina — director, appointed 01/09/2024not on trustee list
• HOBBS, Tim Michael, Professor — director, appointed 01/09/2024on trustee list
• MURRAY HILL, Hilary Anne — director, appointed 03/05/2022not on trustee list
• CRIPPS, Matthew Ellis Rowland, Professor — director, appointed 01/10/2021on trustee list
• SELLICK, Victoria Kate — director, appointed 25/06/2021on trustee list
• DALAL, Gautam Shashichandra — director, appointed 25/06/2021on trustee list
• LANGSTAFF, Nigel Jeremy — director, appointed 25/06/2021on trustee list
• O'SULLIVAN, June Antoinette — director, appointed 19/12/2018not on trustee list
• BAILEY, Jennifer Rachael — secretary, appointed 28/02/2018

Official officers record.

Public-sector contracts awarded

From the official Contracts Finder and Find a Tender notices (supplier matched by exact registered name). Contract income is distinct from grants.

Property (HM Land Registry)

1 registered title in England and Wales held by the charity’s company or corporate body (0 freehold). All charity-held property. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright, OGL v3.0.

Public profiles (found on the charity’s own website): facebook · instagram

Advertised salaries (public job ads)

Roles this charity has advertised on CharityJob, matched on the exact employer name. A different source from the statutory pay bands above: these are asking salaries for vacancies, not what anyone was paid.

• Designer, Product & Service Development — £40,000 - £45,000 per year · Multiple Locations (Hybrid) · posted 1 week ago (seen 28/10/2026)

Structured financials (annual return, FY ending 31/03/2025)

Reported reserves equal ~5.9 months of spending — above the median for charities its size (median 4.6 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, largest income source: Charitable activities (82% of income) — components as reported reconcile to the return’s total income; not from the accounts narrative.

Per its annual return, cost of raising funds: 8.9% of total income — above the median for charities its size (3.7%) (benchmarks).

Register events

• Received assets from another charity (21/05/2026) — per the register’s event history; asset transfers typically record mergers or reorganisations.
• Received assets from another charity (01/06/2023) — per the register’s event history; asset transfers typically record mergers or reorganisations.

Trustees · trustee networks

• Radha Rupa Chakrabortychair · trustee of 1 other charity
• Dr June Antoinette O'Sullivan-Halse OBE · trustee of 1 other charity
• Edward David Mugisha Poultney
• Ellen Kristina Broome
• Gautam Shashichandra Dalal · trustee of 1 other charity
• Hilary Anne Murray Hill
• Nigel Jeremy Langstaff · trustee of 2 other charities
• Professor Matthew Ellis Rowland Cripps
• Professor Tim Michael Hobbs
• Steven James Crocker OBE · trustee of 1 other charity
• Victoria Kate Sellick

Trustee list from the Charity Commission register (current, not historical).

Operates in: Northern Ireland · Throughout England And Wales

Income and spending

Common questions

Known funders

Grants to this charity found in funders’ own accounts filings.

Grants marked “Unverified read” were flagged by automated checks as possibly misread from the funder’s filed accounts. They are listed, but left out of the totals, counts and funder relationships this site computes.

Government & lottery funding

Grants to this charity published as open data by government and lottery funders (360Giving).

Funders of similar charities

Funders whose accounts show grants to charities similar to this one (and no recorded grant to this charity) — a starting list for fundraisers.

Charities like this

Semantically similar by activities and financial character, from our analysed corpus. Compare with BOOKMARK READING CHARITY.

• BOOKMARK READING CHARITY income £4.1m
• THE NATIONAL LITERACY TRUST income £14.3m
• CHILDREN'S BOOK PROJECT income £583k
• READING EDUCATION TRUST income £1.1m
• ADULT LITERACY TRUST income £360k
• READING FC COMMUNITY TRUST income £2.4m

Side by side with its peers

Each row is that charity’s latest analysed filing; every value is quote-backed on its own page.