Islington takes on the “chuggers”

Islington council is considering banning street fundraisers (or “chuggers”) from seven key sites in the borough. After numerous complaints about harassment from residents, councillors are looking into cracking down on the phenomenon.

Chuggers often refuse to take no for an answer

The council is consulting lawyers about how to bring in a by-law to stop these teams of “in your face” agency workers who sign people up to long-term direct debits.

Larger charities claim that this is the most effective way of raising money but the practice has raised concerns about bringing all charitable giving into disrepute and leaves small, local charities, who can’t afford to hire agencies, out in the cold.

Council explores chugger ban

Cllr Paul Convery, told the Islington Gazette that “There are too many, they hassle people and they are in your face. It seems to be legal robbery in some ways and it gives charities a bad name. The time has come to tackle this nuisance.”

According to the Gazette the council is also urging the government to bring into force licensing powers from the 2006 Charities Act – and is demanding the industry watchdog, PFRA, remove the borough’s streets from its list of approved sites. The council hopes that people will give to local charities instead.

The Evening standard’s Rosamund Urmond highlighted earlier in the year that “Last year, to no one’s surprise, an investigation by the BBC found that tens of millions of pounds raised by chuggers had ended up in the pockets of their private fund-raising firm employers. The BBC also discovered that charities often end up paying more for a signature than they will get back in donations.”

Pressure tactics

More concerning are the pressure tactics and emotional blackmail that harden attitudes towards giving more generally, making the tactic a victim of ever diminishing returns.

Chuggers tend to use a combination of hard sell tactics and relentless cheerfulness in their bid to get more commissions. They have been known to refuse to allow people to get past them, chase people down the street or even insult them when they refuse to sign up. It’s clear that any internal regulations about behaviour are concerned solely with maximising returns rather than allowing people to walk the streets of their own communities without harassment.

While most of us are relaxed about people selling the Big Issue, petitioning or shaking charity tins (indeed these are seen as a social good) it is the anti-social tactics of these agency workers that cause irritation, not the fact of simply being spoken to. Chuggers are actively trained to be difficult to shake off and the agencies concerned are focused on the number of people signed up to direct debits (refusing cash donations), rather than ensuring their staff are not causing problems.

This strange brand of chirpy aggressiveness earned chuggers pride of place in Andrew Holmes and Dan Wilson’s (admittedly quite grumpy) top fifty Pains in Public, published several years ago at the very beginning of the phenomenon. Chugging is now widely seen as a public nuisance, although opinion is divided on whether it is a necessary evil or what regulation is appropriate.

To some extent the fact that young people take these jobs at all reflects the lack of meaningful employment opportunities open to them. However, most people do not want to have to regularly be forced to tell a “friendly” but persistent young person to leave them alone. Islington council should be congratulated for looking at ways of making their streets less annoying.