On-the-spot fines handed out for offenses including swearing, shouting, idling, whipping and begging, known as “busy” fines, jumped by 42% in 2023, according to a new report.
Most of the 19,162 punishments in England and Wales – from the previous record from 13,433 in 2022. – are issued by private legal firms hired by the councils, research found.
These companies are paid for each fine and so, civil liberties activists argue, they have an incentive to issue as many as possible.
“These hefty fines are clearly not fit for purpose,” said Josie Appleton, author of the report from a group called The Manifesto Club, which campaigns against what it calls “everyday hyper-regulation”.
“This is a blank check power that allows individual council officers to write their own laws – and now those laws are enforced by private wardens who get fined.
“This is a recipe for pervasive crime and rampant injustice,” she added. “This power should be removed or substantially reformed to ensure it is used proportionately and fairly and does not infringe on people’s right to use public spaces.”
The Manifesto Club report used Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation to ask councils about penalties for breaching Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs), powers that allow councils to ban activities in public spaces.
The report found that the 39 councils that hired a private PSPO enforcement company issued a total of 14,633 penalties, while the 261 councils that did not hire a private company issued 4,529 penalties.
“Private court companies are becoming very effective at catching large numbers of people for relatively innocuous acts that would go unpunished in other municipal areas,” Appleton said.
“These fines make up the majority of PSPO penalties, but almost anyone can potentially breach broad laws prohibiting activities such as ‘excessive noise’, ‘nuisance’, ‘reckless behaviour’ or ‘assembling in a group,'” she said.
The report comes after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) issued confidential advice stating that they want to make it illegal for councils in England to collect revenue by using fixed penalty notices for littering, the threat of criminal record and fines of up to £2,500 on conviction.
In the consultation seen by the Guardian, Defra said it wants to impose a “clear and express obligation” on councils to ensure that they, or any private companies they employ, use “proportionate and appropriate enforcement actions” when dealing with disposal of waste.
The government department said it was concerned that “disproportionate enforcement activity is undermining legitimate messages against littering and other environmental violations.”
Defra says it wants to ensure that “under no circumstances should councils use Fixed Penalty Notices or Civil Penalty Notices as a means of generating income”.
They also say they want to mandate that where councils choose to use a third-party enforcement service, they ensure that the enforcement service “meets all the requirements set out for the authority itself and that private businesses should not be able to receive -large revenues or profits only from increasing the volume of sanctions”.
In 2013 Defra has strengthened the enforcement powers of waste authorities by raising the cap on fixed penalty notices from £150 to £500. But it now says their consultation was generated in part “due to reports of councils using such penalties to raise revenue despite 2019 guidance making clear this should never happen”.
The Manifesto Club report on PSPO found that the highest emitting councils were Harrow, Redbridge and Hillingdon.
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Harrow issued 3,919 penalties, with fines for boosting, feeding the birds, failing to produce a dog fouling bag, drinking and leafleting.
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Redbridge issued 3,550 penalties, including 3,016 for spitting, 142 for drinking alcohol in public, eight for leafleting and three for gambling.
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Hillingdon issued 3,060 penalties, including 2,335 for “idling” (leaving the engine running for more than two minutes), 342 for spitting and 115 for motorized electric vehicles.
The report includes cases of musician David Fisher, who was fined for staying outside a Bruce Springsteen concert, and a Colchester cyclist who says he was fined for locking his bike to a bike rack.
