BRITISH charities admitted last night that they would struggle to spend the vast sums of money donated by the public to victims of the Asian tsunami.

More than £365 million has been raised in individual donations to tsunami relief in the six weeks since the Boxing Day disaster. More than 85 per cent of British adults have given something.

But the British Red Cross has told The Times that it may have difficulty responsibly spending the £60 million raised so far and is considering whether it can divert some money to other causes.

At least two other large British charities have privately admitted that they will have difficulty in allocating all the money received. However the charities fear that saying so publicly would result in a belief that they did not need donations in the future.

Oxfam has suspended its tsunami appeal after admitting that it has all the money it needs while Médecins Sans Frontières has offered donors their money back after it received more than three times the amount it had asked for.

The British Red Cross said that it wanted charities to be open and admit that it would be a challenge to spend all the money responsibly.

“In disasters like this, the most we generally get is $50 per affected person,” Matthias Schmale, international director of the British Red Cross, said. “That’s the rule of thumb. We are set up to spend that kind of money, but now we have $1,000 per affected person, so the difference is huge.

“We need to be honest and admit that this presents new challenges to us. The jury is out as to whether we can do it.”

He said that one solution might be for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), comprising the 12 main British charities, to ask for the money to be used for other causes.

“This is only speculative, but a possibility might be for the DEC to go public jointly and say that this is the situation and we ask for your understanding that we might want to use the money for other disasters,” he said.

The problem has been caused by the huge response from both governments and charities. The UN has been promised around £3 billion by governments while both Thailand and India have refused large scale international assistance. An additional hurdle is that in Britain money raised by the DEC has to be spent within three years.

Herr Schmale said that it was impossible to say that there was “too much money”. However, difficulties of access to some of the worst affected areas, shortages of building materials, equipment and trained workers and the need to consult local people, governments and agencies, all limited the pace and scope of work in the short to medium term.

“We should be open to admit that it’s quite a challenge to come up with responsible spending plans for it all. Everyone has a lot of money as well and everyone is looking to spend their money in a responsible manner at the same time,” he said.

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