We have posted before on Forest Dean Council’s attempt to ban sheep from the village of Bream. The ban would have threatened traditional sheep-grazing practices and the long-standing practice of sheep commoning. There is good news: the PSPO was defeated, in a…
Redbridge Council is currently consulting on a PSPO that will ban busking in non-designated spots, badly organised pubic events, charity collectors in non-designated spots, spitting and ‘aggressive begging’. The Manifesto Club strongly opposes this order and considers it to be an unreasonable intervention into public freedoms. Our response to the consultation is below. You can respond to the consultation here. Planned PSPO: “No person shall refuse to stop drinking alcohol or hand over any containers (sealed or unsealed) which are believed to contain alcohol, when required to do so by an authorised officer in order to prevent public nuisance or disorder.”…
Guest post from the Forest of Dean sheep Commoners Association, in response to their council’s plan to ban sheep from the village of Bream: The impact of a PSPO in the village of Bream will be to bring to an end hundreds…
Here are some current consultations on PSPOs proposing unreasonable restrictions on public spaces. Do respond – especially if you live in the area. Blaby District Council is planning an order banning 10 to 17 year olds from standing in groups of four or more. See news coverage of the order; see the consultation. The PSPO would cover the whole of the village of Countesthorpe, including the high street, cricket club and village hall, except for parks (see PSPO zones). The council has thoughtfully exempted the local school from the ban on young people standing in groups, realising that this may make school…
The Manifesto Club is supporting a new campaign, Football Fans Not Criminals, highlighting the ways in which ordinary law-abiding football fans are being treated like criminals. For merely attending a match and supporting their team, fans are subject to a series of special controls and restrictions which do not apply to supporters of other sports. There are 11 laws which apply only to football fans, creating offences which would not be an offence in a rugby or cricket stadium. It is an offence to carry alcohol into a football stadium, to drink in view of the pitch, to sell or give away tickets,…
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…
Brighton Council is proposing to ban smoking on the beach. Brighton and Hove beaches is a long, windswept stretch, running for several miles. For most of the year, most of this large area has only a handful of people on it. Anyone smoking in this area would not only not affect others, they probably could not even be seen by them. The council’s director of public health said that ‘in certain weather conditions’ smoking on the beach could cause harm to others. One wonders what weather conditions he is thinking about. Most of the time, the prevailing weather condition is a stiff…
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…
The new, dangerously open-ended ‘public spaces protection order’ powers allow councils to ban any activity which they judge to have a ‘detrimental effect’ on the ‘quality of life’ of an area. Many councils have passed or are planning to bring through these orders (see our list, here). Below are the currently open consultations for public spaces protection orders. Please take the time to respond, especially if you live in or visit the area concerned. If councils receive enough critical responses, this will make it much harder for them to bring the measure through. OXFORD CITY COUNCIL is proposing new laws restricting: sleeping…
A guest post by Jonny Walker, director of Keep Streets Live On Wednesday 20 August at 10am a talented young musician who has represented Great Britain in the world loop championships appeared in court in Westminster answering criminal charges of ‘illegal street trading’ and using a speaker in the street, for a 10 minute busk in Leicester Square early this year with a couple of CDs of his own music with a sign saying ‘suggested donation £5’ and giving details of his Facebook page. This was his fourth court appearance relating to this one incident of spontaneous live music and he now…
As I said in a Spectator article, dog owners are rising up across the country in protest against no-dog zones. Here are a few of the groups taking on their council’s zero-tolerance rules… Friends of dogs in parks – Holland Park, London. A group (including vets) taking on Holland Park’s dogs-on-leads orders, which prevent dogs from getting proper exercise in this large central London park. Their petition has 3000 signatures… West Shore Dog walkers – North Wales – a well organised group opposing Conwy council’s ‘bullying and illegal’ enforcement of no-dog zones, carried out through private enforcement officers. Caroline and Tony Costa…
The Scottish government has passed a bill to appoint a ‘named person’ for every child at birth, with the responsibility of ‘advising, informing or supporting the child or young person’. These parental functions will hitherto be allotted to an employee of a health board or education authority (it is specifically stated that the named person cannot be one of the child’s parents). This extraordinary Children and Young Person’s Act exemplifies a shift within child protection policy, from focusing on children ‘at risk of significant harm’, to the state assuming responsibility for ensuring the ‘wellbeing’ of every child – as if the entire…