Charity awareness monitor survey found 45% of those asked said they trust charities “not much” or “very little”

A London based research group has found public trust in charities is falling across the UK.

NfpSynergy’s latest charity awareness monitor survey found only 48% of the public either trust charities “a great deal” or “quite a lot” in comparison with 53%, when researchers asked the same question in August.

For the poll, people were asked to rate how much they trusted a number of organisations and sectors.

Charities finished 12th on the list, compared to eighth last time round, making them less trusted than groups such as the police, the BBC and even supermarkets according to the monitor.

These are sad results if not surprising given the recent coverage of charities

45% of those asked said they either trusted charities “not much” or “very little” with the remainder saying they were “unsure”.

Although the survey is based on the responses of 1,000 people, Scottish charities perhaps can't read too much into the results as only 78 of the 1,000 were from north of the border.

However, isolated from the rest of the results, the Scottish sample actually shows trust north of the border to be below the national average with just 36 (or 47%) of Scots asked saying they trusted charities “a great deal” or “quite a lot”.

The head of NfpSynergy, Joe Saxton, said the sector is now at a nine year low in trust, comparing it with results from previous years.

“These are sad results if not surprising given the recent coverage of charities,” he said.

“The image of charities and their activities have had six months of unprecedented negative coverage in a number of areas.

“The decline in trust for charities is not part of a wider trend with, for example, trust in the police, schools and the royal family all either increased or stable over the same period.”