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
The weekend of 6–7 August will be a national weekend of protest against ‘public spaces protection orders’ (PSPOs), blank-cheque powers which allow local authorities to ban all kinds of activities in public spaces. We will be carrying out protest actions – big…
Oxford City Council is continuing its campaign to squeeze spontaneous social life and character out of the city with a new PSPO, this time targeting the city’s waterways. The order will prohibit mooring without permission of the landowner, storing items on the bank without permission of the landowner, smoke or noise pollution which causes annoyance to others; it will also give council officers powers to confiscate alcohol and to order people to put their dogs on leads. In its evidence, the council cited the 95 reported crimes that had occurred on the waterways in 19 months, including arson, burglary from boathouses, assault, drug dealing,…
Kettering Council has just passed a draconian and entirely unnecessary PSPO. This order (available in Appendix B here) will ban a series of activities which are in themselves not causing of public nuisance or harm. The result is that people will be fined and criminalised merely for being in a public place, for skateboarding, begging, or for swearing. The PSPO will ban: – ‘Loitering’ – The council’s report says: ‘The police have concerns about the number of people who use the roadways in Kettering as a place to congregate and socialise, particularly at night’. The council does not specify the actual harm…
Southampton Council is proposing a PSPO prohibiting the following activities: (a) The consumption of alcohol or being in possession of an open container of alcohol is prohibited within the designated area. (b) Begging or asking members of the public for money is prohibited within the designated area. (c) Loitering for the purpose of consuming alcohol within the designated area is prohibited (d) Loitering with the intention of begging or asking members of the public for money within the designated area is prohibited. There is a public consultation. Here is the Manifesto Club response: These are extremely unreasonable restrictions on people’s public freedoms.…
Sefton Council in Liverpool has brought through a PSPO banning head or face coverings. Religious headwear is exempt from the restriction, but there are no allowances for the myriad reasons people may want to cover their heads – rain, for example, or cold. The order reads: ‘The head and face are not to be covered by hoods or any other face coverings save for specific items of personal clothing which reflect the individual’s cultural values’. The aim of the order, apparently, is to deal with gun and gang violence in the area. Yet the order did not prohibit gun or gang violence, since these are…
Earlier this year Oxford City Council proposed a public spaces protection order banning a swathe of activities in the city centre – rough sleeping, feeding the pigeons, sleeping in public toilets, unlicensed busking, begging, and more. The plan was met with a student petition that gained over 70,000 signatures, as well as protests from civil liberty groups such as the Manifesto Club and Liberty, buskers Keep Streets Live, and homeless organisations such as Crisis. There was also firm opposition from Green and Liberal Democrat members of the council. The council’s public consultation showed that a clear majority were against the criminalisation of…
Councils’ have been announcing a swathe of new plans for new ‘public spaces protection orders’ banning activities in public spaces. These new orders show the dangers of these arbitrary, open-ended powers, with towns and cities planning bizarre new offences such as ‘loitering’, carrying out card tricks, or failing to be carrying a poop bag. In every case, these new laws target an activity that is not in itself problematic or criminal. The entirely innocent and anodyne will be punished. There will be new criminals created: the mother who smoked a cigarette in a children’s playground, the busker who played a tune on…
Young people’s activities in public spaces are being restricted by a series of new council laws. Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) – which give councils powers to ban activities which have a ‘detrimental effect’ on the ‘quality of life’ – are increasingly…
New anti-social behaviour powers are criminalising people merely for being in a public space. From 20 October 2014, the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act gave police new ‘dispersal powers’ to bar individuals from public spaces if they think a person’s behaviour…
As things stand, it is likely that Oxford Council will tonight enact a PSPO (public spaces protection order), creating a series of new criminal offences in the city centre. The new offences include : A new crime of ‘non-compliant busking’. This means that a busker playing in the wrong spot or for longer than an hour would be committing a criminal offence: they could receive an £100 on-the-spot fine, or £1000 fine on conviction. It will be a crime to beg ‘on more than one occasion’ in the city centre. This means that homeless people in Oxford will be committing an offence if…
If this PSPO goes though it will be a crime to protest with megaphones in Birmingham city centre. It will also be a crime to play violin, acoustic guitar or flute with amplification. That is, the city centre – including the law courts, police station, and council house – will be an area within which amplification of all kinds is prohibited. The council says it has been ‘inundated’ with complaints about noise: I would like to know how many complaints they have received. What’s more likely is that such measures represent the official view that any spontaneous expressions of life in public…
Bassetlaw District Council has just created the following PSPO: ‘The new order prohibits shouting, swearing or acting in a manner as to cause annoyance, harassment, alarm or distress to any person- and also means that 16 year olds will not be permitted to gather in the vicinity in groups of three or more.’ This will make it a crime for an under 16 year old to gather in a group in the defined public space. This amounts to criminalising teenage sociability. Hillingdon Council has passed an order targeted at young people, in one area restricting activities including: ‘using skateboards, pedal cycles, roller…