OUR RELATIONS WITH LEPRA, an international aid charity, have been the cause of recent controversy. Last August, two of our readers, 'Umpire' and 'A (Former) Insider', began posting comments to our profile of the charity which alleged that it had not behaved in a transparent way. This worried us, since we had publicly stated that the charity was a transparent one: we had awarded it a Quality of Reporting score of 80 per cent. We had no option other than to investigate.

The issue was a sensitive one. LEPRA had been displaying our Top-Ranked Charity icon on its website, an honour we bestow on few charities*. If the allegations proved to be true, however, we would have to ask it to remove the icon. In addition, our investigation was publicised in an edition of the charity-workers’ bible, Third Sector magazine. As we began our enquiry, we asked LEPRA to remove our icon from its website for its duration.

That enquiry is now complete. Our conclusion is that LEPRA is not as transparent as our standard profile-research indicated, and we will not be allowing it to use our Top-Ranked Charity icon for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately for legal reasons we cannot disclose the evidence we have seen (contained in a six-page document with ten pages of supporting evidence). However, we can say that during our investigation, responses from senior figures at the charity - in the form of conversations, letters and emails - seemed contradictory to us, and this underlined our conclusion.

We spent many weeks investigating the allegations posted to LEPRA’s profile. We believe that the majority were either unjustified or irrelevant to our purpose. But in the end, the way the charity handled our questions prompted us to reach our final decision.

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* Charities currently displaying our "Top-ranked charity" icon

• Anti-Slavery International
• BBC Children in Need Appeal
• The Cambodia Trust
• Cancer Research UK
• Children in Crisis
• The Children's Society
• Down's Syndrome Association
• Health Unlimited
• Marine Stewardship Council
• Medair
• The Prince's Trust
• Scope
• Survive - Miva
• WaterAid UK
• Wye & Usk Foundation
• Young People's Trust for the Environment

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We would like to thank Sarah Hedley and Nat Ogborn for their invaluable help with this enquiry.

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