Clause 4 of the Crime and Policing Bill includes a substantial increase in penalties for breach of Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPO) and Community Protection Notices (CPNs), from £100 to £500.
The main result of this change will be more people getting massive fines for dubious non-offences such as having a messy garden, begging, standing in groups and ‘idling’. These penalties will be largely issued by dodgy private enforcement companies who are paid per fine.
The Bill is now in the Lords, and two peers – Lord Tim Clement Jones and Baroness Claire Fox – have introduced Committee Stage amendments to remove or reform Clause 4.
This is our view on why these amendments must succeed.
1. PSPOs are undemocratic and ban everyday activities
A PSPO can be issued if a council officer believes an activity is having a ‘detrimental effect’ on the ‘quality of life in the locality’. There is no requirement for public consultation or for the order to be passed through full council, and there is no workable appeals system. Many orders are passed by a single unelected council officer.
There are now over 2000 PSPOs in England and Wales, each of which contains up to 35 separate restrictions. This means tens of thousands of new controls in public spaces.
These include: Hillingdon banned learner drivers from car parks; Blackpool banned the sale of lucky charms; Richmond banned picking up stones; Rugby banned kite flying; several councils banned face coverings; Caerphilly banned anyone from ‘being in possession of a potentially dangerous item’; several PSPOs banned anyone from causing ‘annoyance’.
Other councils have banned countryside activities such as wild swimming, use of camping stoves, stroking ponies, or shouting in the open countryside. Many orders target homeless people: our 2023 research found that 53 councils had banned begging, 7 had banned rough sleeping, and 22 banned loitering.
In addition, at least 28 councils have used PSPOs to give their officers powers to bar people from town centres. In 2023, Doncaster Council officers issued 504 orders to people to leave the town centre.
This means that the laws being enforced by on-the-spot penalties often criminalise everyday activities. This is specifically prohibited by the relevant Statutory Guidance (Statutory guidance states that PSPOs should only target activities causing nuisance or harm, and should not criminalise everyday sociability such as standing in groups).
2. Most penalties are currently issued for innocuous actions
Our FOI research shows that the vast majority of the 19,000 PSPO penalties in 2023 were issued for everyday actions.
For example, 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 penalties 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 busker David Fisher for playing outside a Bruce Springsteen concert.
In one example, in 2023 Southend-on-Sea issued 45 FPNs for begging, 15 for rough sleeping, 3 for ‘reckless behaviour’, and 2 for ‘excessive noise’. That same year 3 councils issued FPNs for loitering and 3 councils issued FPNs for standing in a group, while 12 councils punished begging, and 2 issued penalties for rough sleeping. The penalisation of homeless people is particularly harsh: a £100 fine is already unpayable, let alone a £500 penalty.
Similarly, the majority of penalties for Community Protection Notice breach are issued for anodyne actions. Of the 1200 penalties issued in the year 2022-3, the vast majority were for ‘messy gardens’. One pensioner was fined for feeding the birds.
3. Most PSPO penalties are issued by private companies on commission
The situation is worsened by the fact that the majority of FPNs are now issued by private companies who are paid per fine. This gives enforcement officers a direct incentive to issue as many penalties as possible, which will be most easily achieved by targeting common and largely harmless actions.
In 2023, 75% of PSPO penalties were issued by private enforcement companies who were paid per fine; these companies are responsible for many of the unreasonable fines, including the large number of penalties for idling or for cycling in town centres.
The Home Office (unlike Defra) has not prohibited fining for profit for ASB offences, or even acknowledged the issue. We urge the Home Office to introduce a ban on incentivised enforcement in primary legislation or statutory guidance.