International charities are the most likely to be distrusted by the public, with Oxfam the most distrusted, according to research published by the Charity Commission.
Ten per cent of respondents to the Commission poll said international charities were the type they "trust less than others", double the amount who said this in a similar survey in 2012.
Oxfam was the charity most respondents said they were likely to distrust, with 4 per cent of respondents saying it was the charity they trusted less than others.
The results come from the Public Trust and Confidence in Charities report, published last week, which was based on research carried out on a randomly selected sample of 1,163 people in England and Wales.
Oxfam also third most trusted
Respondents were also asked to name a charity they trusted more than others, and Oxfam appeared in the poll as the third most trusted charity, with 5 per cent of respondents saying they trusted it above all over charities. It came closely behind Macmillan Cancer Support, which got 6 per cent.
Cancer Research UK topped the poll as the UK’s most trusted charity, with 13 per cent of respondents saying they would trust it more than other charities.
However, the same poll puts CRUK in the bottom three least trusted charities, although only one per cent of respondents name the cancer charity as a charity they “trust less than others”.
The RSPCA is the second least trusted charity with three per cent of respondents saying they trusted it the least, while WaterAid was named as being the fourth least trusted charity, entering the category of least trusted for the first time, with one per cent of respondents saying they trusted it less than others.
According to the poll, the top reason for respondents not trusting charities is because they “don’t know how they spend their money”.
Other popular reasons were “because I heard bad stories about them” and “because they use fundraising techniques that I don’t like”.
The independent research by Ipsos Mori showed that trust in charities remains high, but the public have concerns over charity administration costs and fundraising methods.
