The Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014 includes a swathe of unprecedentedly open-ended powers, which significantly undermine rights in public spaces.
The Manifesto Club is focusing on ‘Public Spaces Protection Orders’ (PSPOs), which give local authorities the power to ban any activity they judge to have a ‘detrimental effect’ on the ‘quality of life’ of a locality.
See our briefing document – Buskers and homeless under threat from new ASB powers
Successive governments have set the police on a dangerous course of ‘fast and loose’ policing. This prioritises the high use of increasingly flexible powers, with low benchmarks for issue, and carrying increasingly heavy penalties. There is no credible official data on the…
Manifesto Club Thinkpieces put our campaigning in broader perspective, exploring the underlying dynamics behind the state regulation of public spaces and informal life. This Thinkpiece on Behaviour Control Orders explores this new form of state control of individual and public conduct. It…
The Criminal Justice Bill (CJB) will extend unchecked police and council powers in public spaces and in the home. This briefing concerns the CJB’s amendments to the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (ASBCPA). Over the past 10 years, the Manifesto…
1. What are PSPOs? Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) are unprecedentedly ‘blank cheque’ powers, which allow a single council official to ban activities in public spaces. PSPOs are contained in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, and can be issued…
The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (aka the ‘Busybodies’ Charter’) has led to absurdities such as pensioners being fined for riding bicycles or feeding the birds, and bans on loitering or standing in groups. Now the government wants to amp…
What are Community Protection Notices (CPNs)? Community Protection Notices (CPNs) are powers contained in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, imposing legal restrictions or requirements upon individuals. Police and councils can issue these notices without going through a court, if they believe that somebody’s behaviour is having a ‘detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality’. The CPN must be preceded by a Community Protection Warning (CPW), which is issued on the same grounds. The CPW states that if the person does not follow the requirements then a CPN will be issued. It is a criminal…
The ‘Busybodies’ Charter’ represents the most draconian and unchecked power ever given to officials in the UK. Now the government is planning to extend it further, including giving the police power to write their own laws. We need you to join us in the…
The government’s new Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan represents a significant increase in police and local authority powers to direct individual behaviour, ban public activities, and issue on-the-spot penalties. However, the plan also contains some good news of potential increases in scrutiny, as…
Defra 2019 guidance prohibited the issuing of penalties for financial motives. Yet a new Manifesto Club report finds that council enforcement is ‘more marketised than ever’, with a record number of private companies competing for the right to issue FPNs for environmental and ASB offences. The Manifesto Club report – The Corruption of Punishment 2022 – found a ‘cut throat’ market, with 10 private companies pitching for council enforcement contracts (up from 5 companies in 2018). 90% of councils paid the company per FPN issued, or used another payment system that gave incentives for the company to issue as many fines as…
An 82-year old man was given a £100 fine for cycling in Grimsby town centre. The cycling ban was part of a Public Spaces Protection Order issued by North East Lincolnshire Council. Along with other local authorities in the region, NE Lincolnshire Council employs the private company Kingdom Security to issue penalties for its PSPO, which means that the company is paid per fine issued. Our data shows that, in 2021-2 there were 553 penalties issued by the company for violating the PSPO in NE Lincolnshire, and that many of these fines for cycling. The 82-year old said that he didn’t know…
Labour has introduced an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, to allow ‘fast-track’ Public Spaces Protection Orders in the vicinity of schools and vaccination centres. The amendment passed in the Lords, and now stands a real chance of becoming…
Although we are still mid-pandemic, it appears that some public authorities are focusing their attention on creating more punitive measures targeting dog walkers. First, Dartmoor National Park is creating a new byelaw that allows dog walkers to be fined £500 if their dog’s behaviour, appearance or even presence causes ‘annoyance’ to anyone. There is no requirement that this annoyance have ‘reasonable grounds’. This means that dog walkers in the park put themselves at risk of a sizable fine, without themselves or their pet having done anything wrong. Meanwhile, councils persist in introducing PSPOs banning dog walking off leads on winter beaches. Dog…