Met police given powers to issue £100 on-the-spot fines for wolf-whistling, catcalling and sexualised comments

The Metropolitan Police said the powers are helping to protect its female officers from inappropriate comments - including about their uniforms and handcuffs - while on patrol in the West End and Soho.

They have also been deployed against "kerb crawling" men who loiter outside nightclubs and bars to approach vulnerable women.

Offenders can be hit with a £100 penalty by either police or council officers for being in breach of a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO), which was implemented earlier this year to crack down on a range of anti-social behaviour including harassment, aggressive begging, drug-related activity, public urination, and street drinking.

Those who refuse to pay risk the matter being escalated to a criminal offence.

Police say the new powers provide a "middle-ground" response to use against offenders when their behaviour causes distress, but doesn't meet the threshold for arrest on suspicion of sex-based harassment, which came into force in April this year, and carries a sentence of up to two years in prison.

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"We can arrest people and take them through the criminal justice process [if an offence is serious enough]," says Westminster Neighbourhood Policing Superintendent Natasha Evans. "However, what this allows us to do is really focus on the lower-end antisocial behaviour element of that and educate people using a fine."

As well as another tool to protect the public, Superintendent Evans told LBC it's also an effective way to deter people from harassing female officers. Evans says her colleagues are frequently subjected to inappropriate comments while out on patrol, especially during weekend night shifts.

"Comments around uniform, handcuffs, that kind of thing... they really dread those weekend [shifts] because of those comments," she said.

"We'll still arrest for anything that we need to arrest for. But actually, if someone's had too much to drink [and acts inappropriately], I think this is a really proportionate way of educating people around that harassment and how it makes people feel."

Emma, whose name we've changed, is a 23-year-old police officer who carries out foot patrols in Soho and the West End.

She says men make "horrible comments" about how she looks while she's working: "things like 'sexy' or 'beautiful' … or 'pretty girl'...

"I feel completely undermined because … I want to be noticed for my competence when I get to a scene: the actions that I take and the way that I speak to people and the things that I do, not the way that I look or the fact that I'm female... it's so creepy... your skin crawls a bit."

She says "every single one" of her female colleagues have experienced sexualised comments, and that rookie officers are trained to expect a "certain level of harassment" from the public.

But she says the new power gives them "something in their back pocket" to deal with unwanted attention, adding that rather than having to accept the behaviour, it now only takes a few minutes to issue a fine.

In the last month, police in Westminster have issued around 170 fines to people for being in breach of the wider PSPO.

Emma described an instance in which she used the powers to issue two men with £100 fines. She said it was about 3am in the heart of Soho, club kickout time, at which point police are on the look-out for predatory "kerb-crawlers": men loitering by club exits looking to pick up vulnerable women.

The two men began shouting sexualised comments at a group of young women as they left the venue. She said the women were "really upset" about the comments, prompting Emma to ask the pair what they were doing in the area.

After some "back and forth" she said it was clear they were there to approach women, and issued them with fines.

She said she uses her discretion to ascertain potential the potential threat of a situation, adding that there are no rigid rules setting out what counts as being in breach of the order.

"It's less about what the behaviour is and more about how many times it's done, or who it's directed at, or how obviously it's directed at a particular person," she said.

"I start with strong words of advice and interrupting behaviour, and I make sure that the person I'm talking to has had it explained to them what the problem is. And if it's hit the threshold where I've intervened, then actually I'd probably be happy to give the PSPO there and then."

"I don't think that this means that you can't call a woman beautiful," she added. "What I think it means is that it shouldn't be the first thing that you say. It shouldn't be said excessively either. It shouldn't be said in a particular voice... and it should be said to somebody who you have a reason to believe that they might actually appreciate that."

Emma said the more the public is aware of the expanded powers police now have, the better: "I would hope that women will come to us more quickly at an earlier stage and, and don't feel that they have to wait and accept [harassing] behaviours."

PSPOs have been used by councils for over a decade to deter anti-social behaviour, giving council officers the power to issue Fixed Penalty Notices to people for being in breach of the order in a designated area.

But in Westminster, those powers now extend to police officers, who can use them without a council officer present if they witness someone carrying out banned behaviour.

And while police acting alone can enforce PSPOs in a number of boroughs, only Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, Redbridge, Enfield and Newham have similar, specific orders in place to tackle street and sex-based harassment.

The PSPO in Westminster was implemented in February following "persistent concerns from residents and businesses" to tackle "persistent anti-social behaviour", including street harassment, along with drug-use, loitering, urination and nuisance pedicabs.

"We have a lot of problems with aggressive begging, some really, really unpleasant types of antisocial behaviour... We see public defecation, public urination, there's open drug dealing. This is stuff that has been happening on a regular basis," said Caroline Sargent, Westminster Council's Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Enforcement.

"This is the heart of London, it's the West End, it's our entertainment district. People just want to come here and have fun. They don't want to be pestered, or worse - attacked, and targeted by some of this criminal activity. This PSPO allows us to work with the police and tackle it."

Mark Williams, the Deputy Chief Executive of the Heart of London Business Alliance which represents businesses in the West End, also welcomed the PSPO: "If you don't deal with these fundamental issues, then it's a breeding ground for other even more serious crimes to take place. So you're kind of welcoming more crime in. So dealing with this baseline and getting that right and making it inhospitable for for people to commit crime in this area is exactly what we need to do."