A Chartered Financial Planner spearheading a quest to ban pensions cold calling is optimistic about the success of his campaign after signals in Parliament.

Darren Cooke’s official Parliamentary petition has attracted over 7,100 signatures and has won the backing of firms such as Royal London, Zurich and Aegon.

Mr Cooke APFS, Cert PFS (DM), director of Red Circle Financial Planning in Derbyshire, has been urging industry colleagues to help him consign unsolicited investment phone calls to history’s scrap heap.

As the campaign gathered momentum, Lord Young, a Conservative peer and Treasury spokesman in the Lords, was reported as telling Parliament that there would be an announcement within weeks that "will meet the expectations that have been aroused".

Mr Cooke told Financial Planning Today: “Given the news last Tuesday with Lord Young's statement in the HoL that the government would make an announcement in the next few weeks it seems possible that we will achieve the aim of an outright ban on cold calling for pensions and investments.

“That will be then need to followed up with public awareness so the general public know its illegal and if they get a cold call about their pension that person is already breaking the law so Its not likely to end well if they invest through them.”

He was ‘thrilled’ with so many high profile people like Martin Lewis, Ros Altman and Steve Webb backing the campaign.

He said: “Without their support we would have never had the reach and influence the campaign is gathering. The networks and pension providers are also vital, they bring kudos to what we are doing, they show it is something the industry wants and back both advisers and providers. If we get a ban it will need the providers to be onside to publicise it as well.”

The latest step of the campaign is a new website called bancoldcalling.co.uk, which was proposed by Gareth Thompson of Codepotato and built with the assistance of Phil Bray.

Mr Cooke explained: “It’s there to explain what we are about and why, as a way of thanking supporters and to make it easier for people to access the petition. When speaking to someone it’s far easier to give a web address then the reference number for the petition.”

At 10,000 petition signatures, the Government has to respond and it would trigger a Parliamentary debate at 100,000.

The petition states: “Cold calling on investments and pensions to members of the public very often leads to unregulated investment and scams. Banning cold calling would dramatically reduce the number of people falling prey to fraudsters and losing their savings and pensions.”

The initial sponsors of the petition included a number of Financial Planners and among the first five were: Martin Bamford, of Informed Choice, 
Scott Gallacher, of Rowley Turton
, Al Rush, of Fiver a Day, 
Chris Daems, of Cervello, 
Phillip Bray, of Sense Network.