The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association has backed away from naming and shaming fundraisers who break the codes of practice on street fundraising, and will instead be releasing an annual benchmark of average breaches.

Nearly a year on from introducing a fine system for fundraising agencies and charities which break rules regulating street fundraising, the PFRA revealed how it will be making those breaches public.

The organisation had long said it was wary of issuing a league table of breaches which it said would unfairly penalise those charities and organisations which did the most fundraising, rather than those which performed the worst in terms of standards.

Instead, the PFRA will release an annual benchmark which will feature the average number of penalty points issued per compliance visit made by it. It will be a sector-wide average, and not specific to any one fundraising organisation. Agencies will receive their own scores, and charities will be told of what penalties were issued to agencies working on their behalf. It will also publish data on average monthly breach figures.

This is in addition to the fines system, whereby fundraisers are subject to a sliding scale of financial penalties for breaches ranging from not making disclosures to standing near an ATM. However, with the fines system charities are not told what fines agencies accrue during campaigns run on their behalf.

Head of compliance and standards at PFRA Nick Henry said: “What we have now is the most rigorous system of enforcement and compliance for any type of fundraising.”

Ian MacQuillin, head of communications at the organisation, told civilsociety.co.uk: “We’re again flying the flag for transparency and compliance.

“What we’ve put out there is a really good process, I don’t think we need to be publishing league tables or naming and shaming.”