Are shoppers having to "run the gauntlet" to avoid chuggers?



Watch The BBC Video Here



Rochdale High Street Foundation Chairman, Paul Turner Mitchell took to BBC's breakfast show this morning (23rd July) to highlight the impact of "chugging" on the high street.

"Are town centres becoming suffocated with charity fund raisers who approach you in the street?
They are sometimes referred to as chuggers, short for charity muggers, and today some of the UK's leading charities are debating whether they should be stopped.

Shoppers are having to "circumvent" and "run the gauntlet" to avoid them according to said Paul Turner-Mitchell, chairman of Rochdale's High Street Foundation.

However, Peter Lewis of the Institute of Funding believes it is a very important way of getting long term support for charities."

Further Comments:

Charities do a fantastic amount of good work and make a real difference in the UK - but they need to come up with more imaginative and people friendly ideas for fundraising. Because this fundraising model is just giving charities a bad name. They're often too aggressive and a deterrent for shoppers. People don't want to run a gauntlet of chuggers demanding money when they're just walking down a high street. Sometimes it's like being a ball in a pinball machine bouncing from one to the next.

When you have the chief executive of Marie Curie telling a House of Commons select committee that the practice has become "disgraceful" then I think you know that change is needed.

What traders like myself are campaigning for is to revive British high streets and make them attractive, exciting and welcoming places for shoppers to come and visit. But for this to happen shoppers need to at least have space to breathe and take in their surroundings. I see customers with their heads down ploughing forward to the cash point as fast as they can, doing their best to navigate a team of chuggers who are quite simply corralling customers with collectors on either side of the road pursuing people. When customers are focusing all their energies on avoiding chuggers how can they make spontaneous purchases or properly appreciate the businesses on the high street?

Paul Turner-Mitchell

Chair, Rochdale High Street Foundation