The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has collected more than 30 times as many bags of donated goods for the British Heart Foundation's Bag-athon, as the next most prolific collector.

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, which is still embroiled in a dispute with the Charity Commission over its entitlement to charitable status, collected 12,998 bags for last month's campaign.

 

British Heart Foundation has said it could have raised as much as £22m from the fundraising challenge. 

More than one million bags of unwanted items were donated to the charity during its Bag-athon campaign, just beating the one-million-bag target.

The charity estimates that each bag of donated items could be worth up to £20 - so the Plymouth Brethren's contribution could be worth up to £260,000. 

BHF's retail director, Mike Taylor, said: “We have had an amazing response, with over 1,134,820 bags donated from people across the UK.”

BHF launched the event - its second Bag-athon challenge - this September encouraging individuals and groups to collect as many bags of unwanted clothes, toys, books, CDs and DVDs as they could and donate them to BHF charity shops.

Participants registered online to share updates with friends and supporters. BHF created league tables to keep track of those that had collected the most. Second behind the Plymouth Brethren was Whiteley Shopping Centre, which collected and donated 375 bags.

BHF came top in this year's Charity Shops Survey with income increasing by 8.6 per cent to £163.8m.

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