The Charity Commission is assessing whether an approach from a pro-Europe campaign group to a students’ union requesting access to its students to urge them to vote against Ukip in next year’s European elections, breaches rules on political campaigning.

The campaign group British Influence sent the following email to a university students’ union on 17 October: “My name is Joe Coney and I work at British Influence, a pro-European umbrella campaign in the UK. We are running a campaign at the EP2014 elections to stop Ukip becoming the biggest party, which they are on course to do.

“A significant Ukip win would be bad news on issues such as gender and LGBT equality and stopping climate change. We also think that more Ukip MEPs means less clout for the UK in the European Parliament for the next five years.

“We realise that your charity status means that the SU can’t campaign – we would like to do it for you. By getting the young, liberal vote out in such a low turnout election, we can reduce Ukip’s overall share of the vote.

“We are looking to host a campaign training session on your campus before Christmas - is this something that you and your members would be interested in? It would also be great to discuss with you any ways in which the students union could help us get more students to vote in the election.”

But far from inviting British Influence onto campus, the student body forwarded the email straight to Ukip, which in turn sent it on to the Charity Commission. Ukip’s chairman Steve Crowther wrote to the Commission’s head of legal services, Kenneth Dibble: “I am writing to ask whether [this] approach, by an organisation to a registered charity, would breach rules governing the behaviour of charities in relation to political activity.”

Ukip declined to name the students' union concerned.

The Charity Commission confirmed yesterday that it had received Ukip’s enquiry and is looking into it.

Invited to comment on why it had approached the students’ union in this way, British Influence’s deputy director Adam Nathan told civilsociety.co.uk that “this was just a clumsily-worded email with no harm intended”.

He did not reply to a further question about whether the same email had been sent to other charities.

British Influence is not a registered charity itself.

Additional reporting by Tania Mason