The majority of the UK’s top 5,000 charities have seen the value of their net assets fall as a result of the recession, with the total value of the biggest charities’ assets taking a steep dive.

Charities faced falls of up to a quarter of their net assets in 2008/2009 compared to the previous year, as the total value of net assets of the 5,000 largest charities in the UK slumped by 7.6 per cent over the period, to come in at £93.2bn.

The Church Commissioners of England lost the greatest amount of value during the year, dropping £1.31bn – or just over 23 per cent – of its value. Grantmaking charity the Garfield Weston Foundation also saw its assets take a dive in 2008/2009, with £825.8m wiped off its balance sheets. Meanwhile the National Trust and St Guy and Thomas’ Charity were both big losers, dropping just under a quarter of a billion pounds and £133m respectively.

But the figures released today by CharityFinancials.com could have been worse. While just under 60 per cent of the top 5,000 organisations reported a fall over the period – losing a combined £10.8bn – some charities experienced a rise in their net asset values, increasing by a combined £3.1bn.

Mark Pincher, data analyst at CaritasData which is behind CharityFinancials, said: "The impact of the global economic environment on the financial markets was a major contributing factor that resulted in negative revaluations of fixed asset investments. In 2007/2008, listed investments for the top 5,000 charities were valued at £46.6bn, but in 2008/2009 they fell by 12 per cent to £41.1bn."

Check the 'related files' for the list of the ten charities whose net assets fell by the greatest value.