Is noise a security issue? The manager of a store in New Street in downtown Birmingham told the city council so, as put in front of the city council’s cabinet on July 22 as it considered what to do next about the perennial problem.
The unidentified manager complained that buskers and ‘open air preachers’ were so loud that the shop radios connecting the store’s four floors couldn’t be heard; nor could the back door bell for stock deliveries. The manager raised the ‘mental wellbeing’ of staff faced by noise; and the practical matter of the ‘emergency doorbell’ on the second floor; the manager said ‘the music is so loud that staff would not be able to hear the doorbell and attend to the safety concern‘. As for rude ‘chuggers’ (people aggressively collecting for charity), the manager recalled a case of a fight in-store by ‘boys’ which prompted the store to close its front doors ‘due to safety concerns’. As background; the outdoor noise was drowning out the store’s own music (played to create a brand image) and as many staff were in their teens, they could feel too intimidated to ask someone to be quieter (hence the use of the business improvement district – BID for short, whose officers could do so).
In any case, noise matters to humans, especially where they are densest together, in city centres. What to one visitor is charming music, and to the guitar player a livelihood, is to the office and shop worker torture. Efforts by the authorities to reconcile all those points of view may well flounder; a judge in April 2025 made a nuisance order banning busking in Leicester Square, in central London; despite Westminster City Council’s licensing regime for ‘street entertainment’. In Leicester Square as in other city centres, in-house or hired non-police patrollers are generally the public face of authority, providing a first response to crime and noise complaints alike.
Theme
Among themes raised by numerous businesses and put before the cabinet were that the ‘unbearable’ noise led visitors to say they would not come back to the city centre; and that the performers caused congestion and safety issues – crowds gathered, and performers even put up ropes and barriers. One business complained of a ‘wall of noise’, and an ‘unsafe and intimidating atmosphere’. Birmingham Central BID officers responded to the consultation at length likewise.
Amplified
Birmingham City Council for years has been receiving complaints about noise in the main retail area in the city centre from ‘street entertaining, street preaching and busking’. Hence the council already has two Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) ‘aimed at controlling excessive noise levels’. As an order lasts for at most three years, they’re due to expire in August 2025. The council has however ‘received an increasing number of complaints about excessive noise’; hence it’s proposed a renewed order covering a wider area. As a report by the council’s Director of Regulation and Enforcement Sajeela Naseer pointed out to the council’s cabinet, the city centre ‘is now mixed-use’ – gone are the days when a centre was only for businesses, offices and shops; people increasingly live there. Besides, businesses have complained of amplified busking, street performing and preaching. If council staff have tried to ‘informally’ resolve the noise outside the PSPO area, they have been met by intimidation, or even turning up of volume. The centre noise PSPOs are enforced as part of the daily patrols by the council’s enforcement contractor, Waste Investigation Support and Enforcement Ltd (WISE for short). Officers ‘address any issues that they come across’, and carry out ‘intelligence led patrols’ in the evening, particularly over the summer ‘and in the lead up to Christmas’, the centre’s busiest times of year.
Enforcement
The report suggested the problem is two-fold; WISE officers when enforcing the city centre noise PSPOs, ‘employ an informal approach to start off with and are normally successful in directing street users away from the PSPO area’. However, twice officers have been assaulted as a result; hence their evening patrols are made with West Midlands Police. Besides, as that implies, the ‘street users’ are simply displaced outside the PSPO area, and cause noise anew.
How loud
As for how loud buskers might be, the report mentioned one on a street corner that could be clearly head 200 metres away. As for busking’s effect on businesses, one in the Central Business Improvement District area, on a first floor, responded to the council’s consultation online by saying that ground floor busking ‘severely impacted on their ability to carry on normal conversation and conduct normal business’. The noise matters to retail because, in the words of the report, noises ‘are impacting on visitor experience’. As for how many people making (amplified) noise are around, the report suggested ‘altercations’, even physical, ‘between buskers and preachers on the street who have been competing for space to operate’. Businesses last year kept ‘diary sheets’ to record noise; mostly it came from buskers rather than preachers (and a handful of ‘street performers’).
Usually, the nuisances that a council seeks to combat with a PSPO are already covered by other laws – such as littering and dog fouling, and begging. In this case of noise, a council has a ‘statutory duty’ to enforce the Environmental Protection Act 1990; except that as the Birmingham report to cabinet ahead of its July 22 meeting admitted, ‘given the transient nature of the users of the street’, it’s not practical. By comparison, a ‘PSPO provides a simple enforcement regime’, the report said.
Some background
PSPOs came in under the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014. A council has the power to impose conditions on the use of a set place, to tackle anti-social behaviour that affects ‘quality of life’; typically fouling by dogs, also littering and on-street drinking and urinating. It’s an offence to breach the requirements of a PSPO, which can result in a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) being issued, whether by a police officer or council officer, or a hired patroller.
Consultation
The report to cabinet gave responses to the consultation; some responding felt that music and preaching was ‘part of the Birmingham city experience’, others condemned it as off-putting ‘noise pollution’. Some sought a middle way, welcoming music, while deploring amplified preaching (one suggested that ‘Christian preachers and the Islamic preachers increase their noise levels in an attempt to drown each other out’). One response complained about the authorities’ priorities (‘police something worth policing, drugs crime and theft’). Yet most replies to the consultation were accepting that the argument over noise reflected what sort of public space people want to see (and hear!). The campaign group Keep Streets Live defended ‘street performance culture’ and said that ‘outright bans’ such as Birmingham’s proposed PSPO ‘only result in displacing issues regarding antisocial behaviour rather than tackling them’. The Musicians’ Union suggested a compromise; daytime agreed ‘pitches’. This would imply auditions, and photo-ID badges and checks (and since 2023 Birmingham’s council is in effect bankrupt and has had to make cuts, and agree spending with centrally-imposed commissioners). While another suggested compromise was to set a noise level in decibels, as the report pointed out (and any parent asking their child to turn music in their room down can tell), the noise-maker might comply and then turn it up again.
Business views
As part of the consultation, an unidentified Birmingham city centre business described the noise and sheer bustle outside (from demonstrations and marches) as part of annoyances – sellers of fake perfume, drummers, amplified religious speakers (‘too loud’), pestering charity collectors, beggars and thieves (‘inundated with them’), homeless people who use the fire escape at the back of the premises, including to take drugs (‘we often find needles’). Another, from an unidentified bank, wrote likewise of various ‘issues’, such as injection of drugs at the bank’s fire meeting point (the writer described drugs in the city centre as ‘out of control’), homeless people lingering outside and in the banking hall, that made customers and staff alike feel ‘unsafe’; and on-street sellers of products on trollies. The writer linked busking to other social problems; citing the case of a ‘homeless busker’ ‘kicking his dog and calling staff members abusive words’. A hotel on New Street too while responding to the consultation, raised other issues of ‘chaos’, such as guests complaining of being begged at. A New Street retailer complained of ‘overwhelming’ noise, especially at weekends and bank holidays, sometimes so high that the retailer queried if a fire alarm would be heard. That retailer however did not want noise banned, but managed.
The same cabinet meeting discussed a separate PSPO against illegal street trading; more on this link.
Photo by Mark Rowe: West Midlands Police officer and Central BID patroller in conversation on New Street, Birmingham, April 2025 morning.
