A number of individuals have recently been convicted of stealing, or attempting to steal, substantial sums of money from charities.

• In December Richard Shepherd, 26, was jailed for a year after he abused his position as finance assistant at the Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice, Rotherham to steal £20,000 donated to help terminally ill children through their last months.

• In January Ann Yaman, 64, was jailed for four years after she abused her position as treasurer of a trust that ran a rural charity bus service in Bentham, North Yorks, and treasurer of a youth cafe in the town. She stole a total of £310,000, forcing the bus service into liquidation with the loss of 15 jobs and delayed her sentencing by forging letters from doctors claiming she was too ill to attend court.

• Also in January solicitor Richard Caplan,62, was jailed for two years and eight months, and struck off, for attempting to defraud the National Library for the Blind out of £200,000 of the £305,000 left to them in a will for which Caplan was the trusted executor, and which he altered to perpetrate the fraud.