LONDON LETTER:The north London borough is the latest to consider banning or at least restricting street fundraising
KNOWN AS chuggers, they are a familiar sight on British streets. With colourful bibs and clipboards in hand, they greet passersby cheerily in search of a signature for a monthly direct debit for one of hundreds of charities ever in need of funds.
The word “chugger” – an amalgam of “charity” and “mugger” – is intensely disliked by those who do the work.
It hails from Austria, where the fundraising technique was first dreamt up and from where Greenpeace brought it to the United Kingdom in 1997.
Today, however, patience is wearing out. Islington Council in north London is the latest to face calls to ban them or, at the very least to restrict both the number of places from where they can operate and the number of days they can work.
Local Labour councillor Paul Convery told LBC Radio: “A lot of people tell us – residents and businesses – they find this a really serious inconvenience. They feel they’re harassed, a bit threatened and annoyed and we think it is something that needs to be strictly controlled.”
However, Islington is not a chuggers’ free-for-all. Instead, local tempers have risen even though they are allowed to work only in seven patches in the borough, monitored by the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA).
Refusing unilaterally to cut down on the number of chuggers, the association is clearly irritated by the mounting efforts by councils against them. “You can’t ban things because you don’t like them,” it said. “That’s not democracy in action.”
Last year, Manchester City Council became the 40th local authority to impose restrictions in agreement with the regulatory association to limit the chuggers to just four sites in the city centre operating only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 9am and 6pm.
In Wolverhampton, a year-long battle has taken place with the local council, leading it to warn last September that each chugger is liable for a £500 fine on prosecution under local bylaws.
Wolverhampton had been in talks with the association for a year on a deal that would have given licensed access to a number of plots, but the fundraising organisation claims that the council pulled out of the talks in the spring with no warning.
Warning it will not stand idly by, the association complains that the council’s bylaw does not cover it: “Fundraisers do not sell or solicit goods or services and we have confirmation from the Office of Fair Trading that fundraising is not trading.”
Liverpool quickly followed the Manchester example, with a senior city official complaining that people were tired of being approached daily. He argued that it could not work for charities either because they are being viewed as a nuisance.
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In fact, chugging does work for the charities. Latest figures show that donations fell by one-eighth last year and that 6 per cent of people said they had stopped giving because of the impact of the economic crisis, leaving the charities reluctant to lose the funding stream. The figures show why. In 2008-2009, chuggers signed up 740,000 people.
Last year, they managed more than 600,000, each giving £90 – while some charities are reporting that direct debit payments are up.
Furthermore, charities agree that chuggers allow them to target the 20-30-year-olds they cannot reach by direct mailing, since they allegedly prefer a more “personal and interactive” approach.
The chuggers are paid, which is hardly surprising since they work up to 40 hours a week or more.
The Charity Commission says chuggers are supposed to tell the public they are receiving a wage “as agents of a charity”, although the experience on the street would suggest this happens rarely.
“If you are asked to make a long-term financial commitment, you should feel free to take the material home and look at it more closely,” the commission says. “It is usually possible to donate direct to the larger charities via their websites.”
Chuggers are not the only ones being paid. So, too, are the companies that hire them, often keeping all of the income from the first year of the direct debit as their fee for signing up the donor.
In a briefing note for MPs, the House of Commons library says chuggers should not be compared to occasional charity collectors.
“A more accurate comparison is not between chuggers and volunteer ‘tin rattlers’ but between chuggers and call-centre staff or direct marketing agency employees.”
Under rules of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, due to come into force in April, chuggers will be required to not stand within three metres of an ATM or obstruct a member of the public on the pavement, along with not taking advantage of the ill, the drunk or those on drugs. Transgressions will bring penalty points, with offences attracting 20, 50 or 100 points depending on the scale of the breach, to will be converted into a fine once the 1,000-point threshold is passed.
Back in Islington, even those who think Paul Convery is going too far by demanding a ban on collections at Angel, Highbury Corner, Archway, Farringdon, Holloway Road and Old Street accept a problem exists.
Liberal Democrats councillor Susan Buchanan said: “Nobody is against the work of the charities, but residents complain that it is impossible to pass Upper Street without being pestered by agency chuggers every day.”
