Presentation by Angela Rawson, Licensing Manager, Nottingham City Council
Minutes:
Angela Rawson, Licensing Manager, gave a presentation on charity collection in the City Centre, highlighting the following points:
(a)
anybody who wishes to carry out
on-street charity collection must apply for a permit for through
Nottingham City Council (NCC), and this must be supported by a
letter from a charity authorising them to collect on its behalf.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the Licensing office to check
whether or not a site is available. After collecting, a sign-off by
a chartered accountant is required before they are allowed to
collect again;
(b)
permits are free of charge and come under one of three categories:
full (operates throughout the entire city boundary), local (for a
specific area or street) or for collection in front of the council
house, which is the only location which allows a table with
leaflets;
(c)
one permit per charity is issued at any
one time. The application form asks how many collectors there will
be and this is used to monitor the number of collectors at any time
in the City Centre. The average number of permits allocated per
year is 80, with a historical high of 200. Community Protection
Officers (CPOs) can ask to see a permit and move collectors on if
this is not shown;
(d)
for face-to-face fundraising (also known
as chugging), where a charity is asking to set up direct debits
rather than appealing for cash, no license is required. The Council
has overall control of chugging through an agreement with the
Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA), and can designate
the areas where fundraising is permitted, the number of fundraisers
per visit and the frequency of visits;
(e)
a diary is produced by the PFRA to show
which fundraising team is visiting when and where. This is copied
to the Licensing team and to CPOs. All fundraisers must wear an ID
card, and fundraising is only permitted in 4 city centre locations:
Lister Gate, Smithy Row, Long Row and Milton Street;
(f)
only two complaints have been received
in the past 14 months from members of the public although there
have been further complaints from businesses such as pavement
cafes. Past complaints have lead to
changes in policy, such as a reduction of the permitted number in
each fundraising team from 6 to 5 and the change of some permitted
locations;
(g)
the PFRA carry out spot-checks and have
their own rulebook which is enforced by penalties and sanctions.
CPOs can also challenge fundraisers and move them on using
Anti-social behaviour (ASB) powers;
(h)
Birmingham City Council proposed a byelaw aimed at preventing
aggressive street collectors, but this was rejected by the Local
Government Minister in July 2014. Birmingham did not appeal the
decision and instead made an agreement with the PFRA. In areas
where an agreement with the PFRA has been made there has been a
fall of 75% in complaints. Nottingham was one of the first to make
an agreement and has been held up as an example of good
practice;
(i) there has been a reduction in the number of complaints since GIFT, the largest fundraising group, went into administration in February 2012.
During discussion, Committee members made the following points:
(j)
Intu shopping centres have similar
controls and are increasingly unlikely to allow charity collection
inside. Milton Street may need to be stop being one of the
designated areas for charity collection as this will be a
restaurant area with outside seating once refurbishment of the
Intu Victoria Centre is
complete;
(k)
collection within stores is not under the remit of NCC but it is
expected that larger stores will have their own polices around
charity collection;
(l) some groups have been allowed to collect whose policies are not in tune with council policies. There has been confusion over which charities have permits at times but work has been done with CPOs to prevent this. These activities have now been curtailed and Clumber Street has been cleared of charity collecting.
RESOLVED to note the presentation and the discussion which followed.