PSPOs

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

Blog • PSPOs

Council bans the wearing of face coverings

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…

Blog • PSPOs

Why Oxford City Council won’t take ‘no’ for an answer

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…

PSPOs • Take action!

New PSPOs – speak out against hyperregulation

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…

Blog • PSPOs

Oxford Council: don’t criminalise begging/busking tonight!

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…

Blog • Free speech • PSPOs

Birmingham to ban microphones in the city centre

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…

Blog • PSPOs

Criminalising youth sociability in public spaces

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…

Briefings • PSPOs

PSPO news: Bans on skateboarding, loitering, remote control cars, pigeon feeding

Councils have brought in a series of PSPOs since our March briefing. Some of these orders target activities that are already crimes – such as urinating and defecating in public – which is likely to be an issue of being able to punish with spot-fines rather than court. Others include specific activities – remote control cars, skateboarding – regardless of whether these are causing a problem. And then there are new vague pseudo-crimes – ‘loitering…so as to cause ASB’: what does that mean? – or causing harrassment, alarm and distress. It is trouble enough when such vague terms are brought before the…

Blog • Booze bans • PSPOs

Cambridge booze ban – barefaced duplicity

Cambridge City council has passed a PSPO banning the drinking of alcohol in public spaces. It’s remarkably unclear how the order will be applied, however. Council leaders and the police insist that it won’t be used against families having a nice picnic, and so on – that it will only be used in cases of anti-social behaviour. And yet, council leaders refused an amendment by the Lib Dems, which would have restricted alcohol confiscation to cases of anti-social behaviour. What is most likely is that the order will be applied against street drinkers, who may or may not be committing anti-social behaviour…

Blog • PSPOs

Oxford City Council to ban anything that makes people feel ‘uncomfortable’

This is the final week in a consultation by Oxford city council, proposing a ban on various ‘anti-social activities’ in the city centre (the council is using new ‘public spaces protection order’ powers, PSPOs, which allow them to ban any activity they judge to have a ‘detrimental effect’ on the ‘quality of life’). These banned activities include : sleeping in toilets, rough sleeping, public drinking, dogs off leads in the city centre, pigeon feeding, ‘non-compliant’ busking, and ‘persistent begging’. When the Manifesto Club debated the issue on BBC Radio Oxford on Sunday, Oxford councillor Dee Sinclair said that they were bringing in the…