Charity legacy income grew by just 0.8 per cent in the 12 months to December 2015, making it the slowest year in legacy growth since 2013, according to a review published yesterday.

Legacy Foresight’s first quarterly overview of 2016 said that “cooling house prices and falling share prices” combined to make 2015 the slowest year for legacy growth amongst its 78 Consortium members since 2013.

The 78 Consortium members received a combined legacy income of £1.2bn from 52,000 legacy notifications. This was due to the fact that the Consortium “received a relatively large number of high-value bequests in 2014” which have since paid out.

Meg Abdy, director of Legacy Foresight, said that its Consortium income “should be boosted” in the coming year by “the significant uplift in legacy notifications seen last summer, following a surge in deaths in winter 2014/15”. This, combined with a more “resilient housing market” and “some recovery in share prices” should see “better growth in the second half of this year”.

The Legacy Monitor Consortium was set up in 2008 to track legacy trends. In 2015, it acquired 8 new members and is now made up of 78 charities which account for more than half the overall legacy market.