Pensioner issued "community protection warning" over drifting leaves, highlights abuse of draconian powers
17 May 2024, 12:05
- Josie Appleton is director of the Manifesto Club, which defends freedom in everyday life.
Retired teacher Lorraine Perro was slapped with a legal notice ordering her to prevent ‘leaves, bark or stones’ from going on to her neighbour’s drive. She was so worried that she erected netting to catch any drifting leaves or bark.
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The notice was a ‘Community Protection Warning’, one of the new-style powers that replaced the ASBO in 2014.
These blank-cheque powers can be issued on the spot by a police or council officer who decides that your behaviour is having a ‘detrimental effect’ on the locality. Officers often don’t even talk to the person first.
At the Manifesto Club we get several emails a week from people who have been issued with unfair Community Protection Notices.
A pensioner was banned from feeding stray cats in his garden, while a Blackpool hotel owner was issued an order after false accusations of dog fouling. Other people have been banned from looking at their neighbours, or from entering their town centre.
These notices can impose severe restrictions on your liberties, but there are few controls to ensure that they are being used correctly.
One former police officer told me that officers were giving them out ‘like confetti, without a lot of thought to the evidence’.
A Manifesto Club report out today says that the Home Office is ‘setting the police on a dangerous course of “fast and loose” policing’. We found that many police forces don’t even know how many orders they have issued.
The Home Office has never assessed the use of these powers or done anything to resolve the problem of misuse.
In fact, the Home Office is now rolling out new powers that will make abuses more likely. The Criminal Justice Bill - currently going through parliament - will allow notices to be issued to children as young as 10, and will increase on-the-spot penalties to £500.
Given that there is no legal aid to help recipients of these orders - even professional adults struggle with appeals - 10-year-olds will stand no chance.
The Home Office needs to get a grip. Police powers should be used in a targeted and proportionate way, rather than thrown around like confetti which wastes police time and makes people’s lives a misery.
