The Crime and Policing Bill will increase penalties for ‘busybody’ offences from £100 to £500 (clause 4).
On-the-spot penalties for Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) and Community Protection Notices (CPNs) are currently £100; the Crime and Policing Bill will increase them to £500.
The main result of this change will be to lead to innocent people being given even heftier penalties by private enforcement companies, who are paid per fine.
PSPO penalties
Manifesto Club FOI research shows that the vast majority of the 19,000 penalties issued in 2023 were for entirely innocuous actions.
- In 2023 Hillingdon issued most of its PSPO penalties for the offence of ‘idling’ (leaving a car engine running for more than two minutes). The 2335 people punished included a man waiting to pick up his wife from the doctor’s and another man trying to keep cool on a hot day.
Large numbers of fines are also issued to cyclists, including an 82 year-old cycling through Grimsby town centre.
- In a 6-month period last year, 1,472 penalties were issued to people cycling in Grimsby, while in Colchester a cyclist was fined for locking his bike to a bikerack.
Others fined included a busker playing outside a Bruce Springsteen concert and homeless people fined for begging or ‘loitering’.
Still worse, these laws are being enforced by private enforcement companies on commission.
- 75% of PSPO penalties are issued by private enforcement companies who are paid per fine, including most of the examples quoted above.
CPN penalties
1200 penalties were issued in the year 2022-3, and the vast majority of these were for ‘messy gardens’.
- Some people were given CPNs instructing them on the height they should prune their shrubs or cut their grass.
- We are in touch with a pensioner who was fined for feeding the birds.
The increase in fines will do nothing but spark a boom in the private enforcement industry, so that more innocent people will be punished.
Clause 4 must be removed.
TAKE ACTION!
- Email your MP and ask them to remove Clause 4, and also to support the inclusion of an amendment banning incentivised enforcement for PSPO offences.
- Sign the petition by busker David Gray asking the Home Office to ban fining for profit for PSPO offences.
- Tweet to the Home Office.