A Nottingham poster campaign designed to prevent people giving money to beggars has been criticised by advertising regulators.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said some of the City Council’s designs “were likely to cause serious or widespread offence”.
It has ordered the authority not to run two of the images again.
The authority put the posters around the city centre in March as part of the Give Smart campaign, asking people to give money to addiction charities instead of people who beg.
Phrases included “BEGGING: WATCH YOUR MONEY GO UP IN SMOKE – Begging funds the misuse of drugs”.
But a petition was set up by Lenton woman Ruth Atkinson who said they “exploited stereotypes”. It was signed by more than 2,000 people and the ASA received seven formal complaints.
Soon after the council took down the posters and replaced them with ones carrying toned-down phrases, but the ASA continued to probe the original campaign and has now delivered a ruling.
The independent body said two of the adverts were likely to cause serious offence because of how strongly they implied all people who begged were “disingenuous and undeserving individuals that would use direct donations for irresponsible means”.
The ASA added in its ruling: “We further considered the ads reinforced negative stereotypes of a group of individuals, most of whom were likely to be considered as vulnerable, who faced a multitude of issues and required specialist support.”
Nottingham City Council responded to the decision by saying it may ask for a review.
Council Leader John Collins said: “The ASA has made a decision based on just seven complaints from people who thought the campaign targeted homeless people.
“It wasn’t about homelessness and made no reference to it. As the Framework housing charity has pointed out, begging shouldn’t be confused with homelessness or rough sleeping. Most people who beg aren’t sleeping rough and most people sleeping rough don’t beg.
“The posters needed to be hard-hitting to get such a serious message across effectively. There’s no point in running a campaign that no-one is going to take notice of.
“The ASA itself states that because something might be offensive to some people is not grounds for finding a marketing communication in breach of the Code but they don’t seem to have applied this to their decision about this campaign.”
In its formal response to the ASA, the council cited nine deaths reported by city charity Framework, where staff believed street beggars had been killed through the using drugs or drink bought with cash from begging.
