The September and October print issues of Professional Security Magazine has featured Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPOs), coming in across England and Wales. Here’s an update. Pictured: Windsor Castle.
Woking Borough Council has proposed a PSPO for its town centre, pointing to aggressive street begging and drug-related deaths. Likewise Great Yarmouth Borough Council on October 1 closed consultation on a proposed district-wide PSPO, ‘to tackle anti-social behaviour associated with drinking alcohol’. Woking, like Windsor, are proposing replacing a designated public place order (DPPO) with the new PSPO, which have become law under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, as the Conservative Government has sought to replace Labour’s invention of ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders).
Liberty meanwhile delivered a letter to Newport City Council urging it to abandon plans that in the view of the civil liberties pressure group constitute a major threat to civil liberties.
A consultation into Newport’s proposed Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) closed on October 4. As drafted, the order would place a blanket ban on begging, rough sleeping and free leaflet distribution, among other things.
Liberty believes such a PSPO would breach the rights of the people of Newport to respect for their private and family life and freedom of expression, protected under the Human Rights Act.
Rosie Brighouse, Legal Officer for Liberty said: “These proposals make a mockery of Newport’s Chartist legacy. For the sake of a new shopping centre, the council is pouring its energies into criminalising the most vulnerable in the city, and silencing means of dissent. This PSPO won’t house people, move them on, or help resolve their homelessness in any other way – it will simply fine them for their extreme poverty. We urge the council in the strongest terms to reconsider these utterly shameful plans.”
Some Public Space Protection Order background
PSPOs are intended to deal with a nuisance or problem in a particular area that is detrimental to a community’s qualify of life, by imposing conditions on the use of that area which apply to everyone. PSPOs have to be reviewed every three years.
Cost
To take the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, DPPO signage will need to be removed from some 120 locations. There are about four signs on average per DPPO (and Windsor and Maidenhead town centres have 25 to 30 signs each). ITo retain all 120 locations would equate to about 520 new signs; and an estimated cost of removing the signage, and putting new signs up is projected to be about £16k in the Royal Borough alone.
