Our new report finds that councils have used Public Spaces Protection Orders (which allow them to ban any activity they judge to have a ‘detrimental effect on the quality of life’) to introduce 1268 new laws, each of which can have dozens of separate restrictions.

Our research finds that these powers are being used to ban innocent actions such as picking up stones, shouting, feeding birds, and sleeping in public.

RESTRICTIONS ON FREE EXPRESSION

There has been an explosion of restrictions on free expression, with 1 in 5 councils now banning swearing, shouting, gestures, or certain kinds of language. In 2022, only 16 councils used PSPOs to regulate language in public spaces – now the figure is 61.

These included:

• Enfield London Borough Council prohibited ‘catcalling (e.g., whistling, making sexual comments), staring or leering’;

• Guildford Borough Council banned ‘intentionally shouting or screaming’;

• Redditch Council banned ‘any threatening, abusive, obscene or offensive language’;

• Waverley Borough Council banned ‘intentionally or recklessly, shouting, swearing, screaming’.

EVERYDAY LIFE CRIMINALISED

A broad range of ordinary activities have been banned under PSPOs. Feeding birds is banned by 13 councils, a restriction that led to a woman being arrested in Harrow earlier this year.

Picking up rocks is banned in an area of Torbay, and picking up stones, soil, or turf is banned in Richmond upon Thames and Rugby. Foraging for blackberries would be an offence in Harrow, Richmond upon Thames, and Rugby.

Sleeping in public is banned across the entire Rother district, and 4 other councils ban sleeping or rough sleeping. Wild swimming is banned across the whole of North Lincolnshire, while Pendle bans anyone from ‘stepping on to or otherwise placing their weight upon any frozen waterway’.

VAGUE LAWS GIVE SWEEPING POWERS TO OFFICIALS

Many of the orders place enormous discretion in the hands of individual officers, effectively allowing them to decide on the spot whether a member of the public has broken the law. Several councils have criminalised causing ‘annoyance’, a standard so subjective it could apply to almost any behaviour an officer finds disagreeable. These included:

• Gosport prohibits sitting or loitering ‘in a manner causing or likely to cause harassment, alarm, distress, nuisance or annoyance to any person’;

• Kingston upon Thames has created ‘a general prohibition’ on behaviour that causes ‘nuisance or annoyance to any other person’;

• Lancaster City Council bans groups of two or more from allowing ‘their actions to cause annoyance’ to anyone nearby.

Begging and loitering restrictions are drawn so widely that simply sitting on the ground or standing around can constitute an offence:

• Welwyn Hatfield District Council targets ‘sitting on the ground in a public place…in a manner that may be perceived that you are inviting people to give you money’;

• Epping Forest defines loitering to include ‘standing, sitting, or lingering aimlessly or without an obvious reason’.

These vague laws transform PSPOs into instruments of official discretion, with members of the public unable to know in advance whether their behaviour is lawful.

Still worse, these vague and innocuous offences are often enforced by private companies, who are paid per fine and incentivised to issue as many penalties as possible.

THESE POWERS MUST BE REFORMED

We are calling for these powers to be reformed. Our four demands are:

1. PSPOs must only target activities causing demonstrable nuisance or harm - not serve as catch-all powers for officials to use at their discretion;

2. All PSPOs should pass through full council and be subject to democratic scrutiny;

3. An accessible and affordable appeal mechanism must be created - the current route via the High Court is very expensive and ineffective;

4. ‘Fining for profit’ should be banned - private enforcement companies should not be contracted to issue penalties on a ‘pay per fine’ arrangement.

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Read on….

Read the full report.

See media below:

The Daily Telegraph (front page), Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, GB News, Sun, Daily Star, LocalGov.co.uk, Local Government Lawyer, MSN, and on Talk TV, Times Radio, Radio Surrey, and other broadcast media.

Shockingly, Labour was the only party who opposed the amendments, inexplicably defending an enforcement industry that is paid per fine - and punishes people for everyday actions in order to meet its targets.

The government has been forced to concede that it will introduce Statutory Guidance on the issue in the next 6 months, which will prohibit payment per fine. We will be fighting to ensure that this guidance is strong and that it has teeth.

This comes as our most recent report revealed that penalties for ‘busybody’ penalties are at an all-time high, with over 25,000 fines issued in 2025 for actions such as feeding the birds, standing in groups, begging, loitering, or busking.

Most of these penalties were issued by councils employing private contractors. Boston (which employs Kingdom LA Support) issued 37 penalties to people for feeding the birds, while North Somerset (which employs Kingdom) issued 7 penalties to people for swimming. Bedford (which employs District Enforcement) issued 619 penalties to people for cycling in the town centre and 4 to people for skateboarding.

Greenwich (which also employs Kingdom) issued 98 penalties for ‘abusive language’, 7 penalties to people for loitering near a cash machine, two for ‘obscene gestures’, three for amplification, and 316 for ‘driving or riding’.

Overall, the 31 councils employing a private company issued 19,214 FPNs, including 10,517 in Hillingdon (which employed the company APCOA) and 3,143 in Harrow (which employed Kingdom Security). The 251 councils not employing a private company together issued 6,152 FPNs.

This means that people were on average 25 times more likely to be fined if their council employed a private company than if their council did not. This is not proportionate or consistent enforcement.

We also had a major victory last week with new Defra guidance, which bans ‘pay per fine’ arrangements with the following line:

Where external contractors are used, private firms should not be able to receive greater revenue or profits just from increasing the volume of penalties.

Thanks to pressure in the Lords, the Home Office has committed to include this same line in its guidance covering ‘anti-social behaviour’ offences.

When this happens, hopefully this will cover the issue across the board. Fining for profit will be banned in the UK. Payment per fine contracts should be illegal, and any fines issued under them should be declared invalid.

These gains have been long and hard coming, and are the result of many years of work. Now we need to make sure they are enforced, to save innocent members of the public for being unfairly fined for anodyne actions while going about their everyday business.

Thanks for your support over the years. We couldn’t have done it without you. If you would like to support this campaign for the period ahead, you can do so here.

Read on:

See our report, and media below….

At least 39 other UK councils have brought through a similar restriction on honking, under new laws designed to stop ‘car cruising’.

Vicky Heap from Sheffield Hallam University, and Clare Farmer from Deakin University in Australia, analysed the 69 active Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) that include ‘car cruising’ prohibitions.

Although the justification for these orders is to tackle dangerous car events including racing or stunts, these PSPOs target a far broader range of behaviour, such as honking, swearing, playing music on the car radio, and even socialising in a car park.

This shows how these powers are being used for policing behaviour in a wider sense, rather than targeting risky behaviour that causes a genuine danger or nuisance.

The academics observed that activities such as racing and stunts are already prohibited in criminal legislation: dangerous car meets would attract significant penalties, including driving bans and large fines.

But rather than focus on dangerous activities, councils have invented new crimes such as undertaking repairs in car parks, taking photos of car gatherings, looking at or displaying cars, or attending a gathering of cars to sell food and drinks.

Other orders prohibited people from congregating or loitering, playing music from car radios, revving engines, driving in convoy, and four areas banned people from using ‘sexual language’ or making ‘sexual suggestions’.

In total, 36 councils banned revving engines, 41 targeted noise such as playing music on the car radio, and 28 banned foul or intimidating language.

For example, Cumberland bans ‘congregating in a car park for the purposes of socialisation without permission’, while Colchester is planning to require people to turn off music while stationary:

Drivers must switch off engines and any amplified music or sound systems when vehicles are parked or stationary in public spaces.

South Staffordshire‘s order bans:

Gathering of spectators which includes areas where people gather to support, watch or follow any type of vehicle activity causing a nuisance to the local community.

Such broad restrictions on ‘gathering’ to watch ‘any type of vehicle activity’ could include members of the public observing antique car meets, if someone decided that the gathering was ‘causing a nuisance’.

The academics noted that some of these orders cover whole local authorities or large areas, which would make it impossible to inform motorists of the restrictions. People would not know that they were entering an area in which playing music on the car radio while stationary was an offence.

Of course, dangerous car cruising events should be prosecuted and punished. But these orders represent a shift from policing to behaviour policing. This blurs the distinction between people not doing anything much and those who are putting other people’s lives in danger.

The police should focus on dangerous driving and activities that cause a significant nuisance or threat, rather than penalising people for looking at cars or taking photographs of cars.

These broad orders could have unintended effects. In Tanbridge it is apparently council bus drivers who are the worst honking offenders, with one member of the public saying: ‘People park in the bus stop and then the bus drivers come along and honk honk honk.’ The council could find a few penalty slips arriving on its own desk.

See below for coverage: on spiked’s Last Orders (starts 15 minutes in), and the Daily Telegraph.

The Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life is a UK non-profit taking on the busybody state.

Support our work by clicking on the link below…

Help us take on the busybody state

Penalties are currently issued at a rate of over 20,000 a year. Around 75% of PSPO penalties are issued by private enforcement companies who are paid per fine.

Generally the companies receive around 80-90% of penalty income, which means that they have a direct incentive to issue as many fines as possible (they need to issue a certain number of fines merely to cover costs, and more to make a profit).

Now peers have passed an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to ban fining for profit.

The amendment states that companies ‘must not receive, directly or indirectly, any financial benefit that is contingent upon the (a) issuing of a fixed penalty notice, or (b) the number or value of fixed penalty notices issued’.

This would mean that ‘payment per fine’ contracts – under which over 14,000 ‘busybody’ penalties are issued each year – would be declared invalid.

Those fined under these corrupt arrangements include:

• In 2023 Hillingdon issued most of its PSPO penalties for the offence of ‘idling’ (leaving a car engine running for more than two minutes). The 2335 people punished included a man waiting to pick up his wife from the doctor’s and another man trying to keep cool on a hot day.

• Large numbers of fines are also issued to cyclists, including an 82 year-old cycling through Grimsby town centre.

  

• In one 6-month period, 1,472 penalties were issued to people cycling in Grimsby, while in Colchester a cyclist was fined for locking his bike to a bikerack.

• Others fined included busker David Fisher for playing outside a Bruce Springsteen concert.

The Crime and Policing Bill will dramatically increase penalties for PSPO and CPN offences from £100 to £500 (Clause 4). Lord Clement Jones’ amendment to Clause 4 would prevent private enforcement from profiting from the price hike.

Introducing the amendment, Lord Tim Clement Jones said:

Environmental and ASB enforcement is increasingly seen as a business. Local authorities are entering into contracts with private companies, boasting of “zero financial risk” while sharing the “surplus revenue” generated by fines. This creates a direct perverse financial incentive to issue as many tickets as possible for innocuous actions.

Supporting, independent peer Baroness Claire Fox said:

There are concerns that antisocial behaviour orders have been corrupted for income generation and commercial purposes. Such scam-like behaviour of taking fines for profit discredits and trivialises a serious approach to tackling anti-social behaviour.

The amendment passed with Liberal Democrat and Conservative support, 205 votes to 188.

We are calling on the government to preserve and support the amendment when the bill returns to the Commons.

It was strange to see Labour peers alone in voting against a change that would protect ordinary people from being unfairly slapped with fines by profiteering private companies, especially when these companies have wrecked such havoc in traditional Labour areas.

It is also strange to see Home Office ministers opposing a measure that has been promoted by Defra, which is currently passing statutory guidance to ban incentivised enforcement for environmental offences.

We are urging the Home Office to think again….

Take action!

* Email your MP, asking them to support the amendment banning fining for profit

* Support the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life

Our report asked councils about their regulation of political street stalls. Findings include:

- Out of 240 councils able to answer the question, only 19 (8%) allowed people to put up a political street stall without applying or asking permission.

- 62 councils charged a fee for a political street stall, including £375 in Bristol and £415-515 in Luton.

- 62 councils said that it was not possible to put up a political street stall in their town or city centres. Sunderland Council said that political stalls are ‘prohibited’ and it only allowed ‘uncontentious’ nonprofits.

Some councils gave themselves - and organisations they support - privileged access to the public square.

Woking Council reserved the use of the two main squares for itself and organisations it supports. It also exempted itself from general restrictions on leafleting and allowed itself to leaflet more frequently than other groups.

Josie Appleton, author of the report, said:

“The public square used to be a democratic space, where people could pitch up and ply their cause to fellow citizens. Now access to public spaces is tightly controlled, and councils are increasingly deciding which political causes we see and hear. The 19 councils that allow political free speech are an example to the rest; we call on other councils to follow their lead. We also call on government to draft guidance for councils, to encourage a more liberal approach and to recognise the key role of local campaigning in democratic life.”

Read our report - ‘Gatekeepers: How councils are controlling access to the public square’

The Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life is a UK non-profit taking on the busybody state.

Support our work by clicking on the link below.

Help us take on the busybody state

Now bird feeders find themselves being fined, arrested, or even imprisoned, under new powers that allow councils to ban any activity they disapprove of.

A lady was filmed last week being arrested for feeding the birds in Harrow; she was crying in handcuffs, surrounded by no fewer than six police officers and two council enforcement officers.

The man taking the video asked the officers: ‘who is the victim of this crime?’, and answered ‘the council’. He was quite right.

The woman had breached a Public Spaces Protection Order, a law that can be created by a single unelected council officer, without any democratic process or public consultation. These laws allow council officers to criminalise any conduct they think has a ‘detrimental effect on the quality of life’.

This is a low benchmark, leading to bans on silent prayer, standing in groups, picking up stones, climbing trees, or swearing - and in many cases feeding the birds.

Our 2022 survey found that six councils had banned feeding birds or animals: this number would be much larger today. In 2023, three councils issued penalties for feeding the birds.

But other powers have been used to target bird feeders too. We’re in touch with several members of the public banned from feeding the birds in their garden. One woman said that the council asked neighbours to monitor her bird feeding:

The council has been asking neighbors to film inside my garden, which they have been doing by climbing ladders and looking through gaps in the gates, and audio monitoring equipment was taken into next door to monitor me. They have viewed the inside of my property from the outside, and all this surveillance is quite intense and effected my mental health.

This level of surveillance would be suitable for someone suspected of drug dealing or some other illegal activity; not a lady who occasionally puts out bird seed.

Another man had to endure a year long legal battle to appeal his order restricting bird feeding in his garden. The council had tried to tell him exactly how he was allowed to feed the birds:

My order stated that future feeding should be ‘limited to scattering small amounts of crumbs and seed’. What is a ‘small’ amount? This goes against the recognised, UK wide guidance for feeding birds in your garden as published by The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, but also the law of the land.

And perhaps the worst case was that of a pensioner who was imprisoned for feeding the pigeons, after he broke a civil injunction ordering him not to. He was treated like a hardened criminal:

I was taken away in a prison van, in solitary because of covid, and held with nothing in a cell for 10 days. In prison I nearly died – I had a doctor and nurse check my blood pressure every day because they said it was the highest they had ever seen and it was critical they bring it down. The sentence was 15 weeks, and I was released after 11 weeks. I was very ill, and I didn’t return to the flat because I had lost that, so I stayed with a friend.

The man is now being threatened with prison for a second time, after being issued with a Criminal Behaviour Order and several Community Protection Notices banning him from feeding the birds on his local beach.

(Our research that examined court records found that a second man has also been imprisoned for feeding the birds).

This persecution of bird feeders is - as the Harrow bystander pointed out - a victimless crime. No one is harmed or inconvenienced by someone throwing a few seeds or bits of bread to the birds. What is being punished is not a violation of other people’s rights, but rather the disobedience of an official order as to how we should behave.

This is not a real crime - which is why bird feeders must be defended, and these busybody orders scrapped.

The Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life is a UK non-profit taking on the busybody state.

Support our work by clicking on the link below…

Help us take on the busybody state