House to House Charity Collections
Advice for local householders
(Date of issue: Tuesday, 17 January 2012)
Local councils’ and Cumbria Constabulary are warning residents
to check the small print before donating clothes using a house to
house charity collection.
Carlisle City Council licenses house to house collections for
charitable purposes. These may involve a request for cash donations
by returning envelopes or collecting donated items, usually
clothing. Some large national charities are authorised by the Home
Office and are exempt from this requirement.
In addition, clothing collections are often made by commercial
companies who resell the clothing and give a donation to a
particular charity. On rare occasions there may be unscrupulous
collectors who have either stolen bags from a reputable charity and
are keeping the proceeds themselves, or collections that are made
without the required permission.
The advice from Carlisle City Council, Cumbria Constabulary and
Cumbria County Council’s Trading Standards is to:
- Read the information on the collecting bag carefully. If it is
circulated by a known charity and you are happy to donate, please
do so.
- If it has charity information on it but the information states
that it is being collected by another company, you may wish to know
what proportion of the profits goes to the charity - you may be
surprised at the level of contribution. Many bags will have a
contact telephone number or website address on them to enable these
questions to be answered. If there is no contact number you may
question why this isn’t included.
- If you are not satisfied that the collection is genuine,
contact your local authority licensing office to check if
permission has been given for that collection. If you are
suspicious about any collectors, ask them for ID and make a note of
this and the vehicle details that they are using and contact
Cumbria Constabulary on telephone number 101.
- Remember that an alternative way of giving items to charity is
to take it in to one of the numerous charitable shops in the city.
Many of these will arrange collection from your home if you are not
able to get out yourself.
Cllr David Morton, Chairman of Carlisle City Council Regulatory
Panel said “Unfortunately there are people out there who will prey
unsuspecting members of the public who wish to give to charity. As
a licensing authority we vet the house to house applications to
ensure that they are for a reputable cause, however some people
still carry out unlicensed collections and the public need to be
aware of this”.
Cumbria Trading Standards manager Angela Jones added: “There are
lots of legitimate and thoroughly worthwhile collections but some
others can mislead residents into thinking that they are donating
to a charity or a good cause when they are actually a profit-making
organisation.
“We would advise anybody who wishes to donate clothing or other
goods to a charity to carry out some basic checks, examine the
leaflets or bags to see if they claim to be a charity and look for
a registered charity number. If in doubt you can always donate
directly to your local charity shop.”
Anyone with information about bogus collectors can also contact
Trading Standards on 08454 040506 or the Charity Commission on 0845
300 0218 to check whether a charity number is genuine.