Fines for chuggers on the way ‘Better late than never,’ says Brighton MP

Labour's David Lepper MP has welcomed a proposed new system which would penalise troublesome ‘chuggers' - face to face street fundraisers.

David, who is a life member of the Association of Town Centre Management and a former chair of the Brighton Town Centre Business Forum, said:

"Although the situation in Brighton seems to have improved recently, I still get complaints from the public and businesses in the city centre about rudeness, unwanted persistence and sheer obstruction from face to face fundraisers.

"Over the years I have worked with our city centre manager and local business and council representatives to try to persuade the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association - the fundraising industry body which is supposed to oversee the rules for street charity fund-raising - to recognise there is a problem.

"I've raised the issue in Parliament as well, presenting a petition from city centre businesses calling for stricter regulation.

"It's a bit late in the day for the PFRA to wake up to this. But I welcome its announcement that it will consult its members on a new system which would permit it to issue points to charities and agencies for minor breaches such as failing to use sites that had been allocated to them or using the wrong site, and for more serious mistakes such as losing donors' data.

"I understand the system would also be used to penalise practices that breached the Institute of Fundraising's code of conduct. Once an organisation received a set number of points, it could be asked to pay a fine or retrain its face-to-face fundraisers."

David added:

"Fundamentally I remain opposed to people being asked to part with their credit card details to complete strangers in the street and entering into regular donations which, long-term, they might not be able to afford. Far better to use schemes like payroll -giving for these donations."