1500 people fined for breaching ‘busybody’ orders

New data shows that 25% of all council-issued Community Protection Notices (CPNs) were punished with a £100 on-the-spot fine.

Community Protection Notices (CPN) are on-the-spot legal orders that can be issued if a council or police officer judges a person’s conduct to have a ‘detrimental effect on the quality of life’. If the officer judges that the recipient breached the notice, they can issue a £100 fixed penalty notice (FPN).

Manifesto Club FOI requests found that in the year between November 2022 and October 2023, 98 councils issued at least one FPN to someone who had breached their Community Protection Notice. Together, these councils issued 1541 on-the-spot fines.

6,133 CPNs were issued by councils that year, meaning that a quarter of CPNs were penalised with a fixed penalty notice (FPN).

This is the first data on the use of CPN fixed penalty notices, and it shows that these legal orders – which can be written out on the spot by a single council officer – are subject to high rates of enforcement. Council FOI responses indicate that many of these penalties were issued for trivial offences, such as messy gardens or barking dogs.

Durham Council issued the highest number of penalties for CPN breach, with 468 on-the-spot fines for ‘untidy yards and gardens’. This was out of 914 CPNs issued, meaning that over 50% of people who received a CPN for an untidy garden were later punished for breach.

Other high-fining councils were Thurrock with 147 FPNs, Nottingham with 88, and Rhondda Cynon Taf with 78.

We issued follow-up FOI requests to get a more detailed breakdown of the offences for which councils are issuing CPN breach penalties. Nottingham City Council told us that it has issued CPN breach penalties for noise, bins on the street, excessive dog barking, and for an ‘overgrown bush’. Barking and Dagenham issued penalties for ‘eyesore gardens’ and also for ‘obstruction’.

Ashfield Council issued penalties to someone for breaching a CPN restricting ‘verbal abuse/intimidating behaviour’, and to another person for entering an area from which they had been barred. Waltham Forest Council issued several penalties for untidy gardens, and one for a ‘damaged caravan’.

The Manifesto Club has been contacted by members of the public who have been fined for breaching a CPN, including a pensioner fined for feeding the birds.

The Community Protection Notice is a dangerously unregulated power that is leading to unreasonable notices targeting trivial activities, and a significant portion of these are being enforced with on-the-spot fines for breach. This power is in dire need of review and reform.


  • Report by Josie Appleton. FOI research by Alice Lemkes.