Complaints about street fundraising have decreased in the year since the Local Government Association signed a national agreement with the face-to-face regulator.

A survey conducted by the LGA has found that complaints about street fundraising have fallen since the Association signed its national ‘Making the Pledge’ agreement with the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association in November 2012. The fall is as much as three-quarters (72 per cent) in regions in which the local authority has a site management agreement (SMA) with the PFRA which restricts and regulates fundraising activity in that city or town.

Local authorities have found the agreements overwhelmingly positive, according to the LGA survey. Nearly all (95 per cent) said they felt their SMAs were a success, and 96 per cent said they were happy with their dealings with PFRA if they had to be in contact regarding complaints.

Head of the LGA’s Safer and Stronger Communities Board Cllr Mehboob Khan said: “By working with charities, councils have been able to strike a sensible balance between charities’ need to ask people for support and the rights of local people not to be pressured to give… There is still work to be done to improve collections and reduce complaints further and this is why we are determined to increase the number of agreements in place.”

The PFRA now has 74 SMAs in place around the country. This falls short of its goal to have increased the number of site agreements to 100 by the end of 2013; a goal expressed when the organisation took Lucy Ellender on secondment from the Local Government Association in February.