Charity and Community bank account

To be eligible for the Community Directplus account you and key individuals must be:

• 18 or over
• A UK resident with a business address in the UK
• Free from county court judgements (CCJs), bankruptcy and individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) over the last six years
• Free from missed payments on any personal credit obligations in the last six months

Your organisation must be one of the following:

• Registered charity (exempted charities must provide a letter of authority with their application)
• Co-operative or community benefit society (if applicable, confirmation of registration with Co-operatives UK and community benefits society act required)
• Credit union (evidence of FCA regulated status required)
• Community interest company (must be registered at Companies House)

And your account must not go above any one of the following annual account limits:

• Credit turnover more than £1 million
• Deposit more than £100,000 in cash
• Deposit more than 5,000 cheques

The Co-operative Bank reserves the right to review the account tariff for customers who exceed any one of the following annual limits of credit turnover exceeding £1m, depositing more than £100,000 in cash, or depositing more than 5,000 cheques.

If your organisation is a limited company, the following must be true:

• The director has never been disqualified
• The business has never been subject to insolvency or an intention to dissolve
• The business has not had a negative net worth in the last set of financial accounts

Your application is subject to status. This means we’ll assess your financial circumstances and complete credit checks.

Not eligible for this account?

You may be eligible for one of our other accounts.

See other accounts

Read the following important documents and save copies for your future reference.

Business account Terms and Conditions PDF

Community Directplus Tariff PDF

Standards of Lending Practice PDF

How we use your personal information PDF

FSCS Information Sheet and Exclusions List PDF

Current Account Switch Agreement PDF

To view information on charging periods and pre-notification dates please visit our account charging page.

As a provider of UK business bank accounts, we have agreed to a basic set of information we’ll need from you to set up your UK business current account.

Find out what you’ll need to provide using the business banking checklist from UK Finance.

View UK Finance’s guide to opening a business account

• Gather all the key information about your Organisation and the Key Individuals associated with the Organisation. By “Key Individuals”, we mean (i) You, (ii) all the other Directors/Trustees/Officers who are responsible for managing the Organisation and (iii) any Authorised Users whom the Organisation has appointed to also be responsible for operating the account. Without this information we cannot progress any further with the application. You can find a list of the required information in the 'Information you'll need' section on the first page of the application form.

• We will check the details of any Key Individuals named on the application against credit reference and fraud prevention agency records. You need to be entitled to disclose information about any other Key Individuals named on the application. By continuing with the application, you confirm that you have gained prior consent from the other Key Individuals named on the application to disclose their information to us for the purposes mentioned above.

If you currently have an open Community Directplus account with us, please apply for an additional account by completing our online application form. If your account requires three signatories or more to sign documents, you will receive an additional signing pack email from the Account Opening team to capture all required signatures.