Council issues 14,000 fines and extends scheme

Powers to fine residents in Peterborough city centre are to be extended for another three years after nearly 14,000 fines were handed out.

Peterborough City Council introduced a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) in 2017, allowing authorised enforcement officers to hand out £80 fines for people committing a series of offences.

And between June 2017 and November 2019 13,750 fixed penalty notices were handed out for offences including cycling on Bridge Street, littering and spitting.

Now, the council is looking to extend the PSPO for another three years with minor alterations. It said 92 per cent of the 192 people who responded to a public consultation on the plans were in favour of continuing the PSPO, as well as MP for Peterborough Paul Bristow and Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary Nick Dean.

However, the decision to continue punishing unauthorised cycling on Bridge Street - where cycling is not allowed between 9am and 6pm every day - split opinion with 48 per cent of people in favour and 49 per cent against, with the rest undecided.

The council said it wanted the PSPO to remain in place “given the continued high number of fixed penalty notices issued to enforce the current restrictions of the order, the current level of crime and ASB (anti-social behaviour) reported to the police in this area and the support from statutory consultees, the public and interested parties”.

The vast majority of the fines handed out since the PSPO began were from officers at private firm Kingdom, which stopped operating in the city in January.

There had been complaints that Kingdom officers were targeting minor offenders.

Of the 13,365 fines handed out by staff from Kingdom, 8,821 (62 per cent) were for littering.

The rest were for unauthorised cycling (3.476), spitting (1,431), failing to dismount from a bike (77), failing to disperse - alcohol related (52) and urination and defecation (48).

During this time 557 cases have been taken to court for non-payment of fines, with 552 leading to convictions.

The council said in December it took one persistent offender to Peterborough Magistrates’ Court where magistrates ruled in its favour and found the person guilty in their absence.

He is said to have been fined a total of £212, while another offender was reportedly prosecuted in January for “persistently breaching” the PSPO.

Enforcement is now carried out exclusively by council-run teams, however, there is no data on how many fines they have handed out so far.

The PSPO was meant to have been extended by April 5 but the council said it missed its deadline due to the coronavirus pandemic, meaning it has had to create a new order.

It said it would be “disproportionate to commence the PSPO consultation process all over again”.

The amended PSPO now allows police and authorised council officers to not only disperse people with alcohol, or if they are causing harassment, alarm or distress, but to ban them from returning for six hours.

The threat of fines for not complying with the council’s code of conduct for busking has also been removed.

Further PSPOs are currently running in an area covering Millfield, New England, Gladstone, Eastfield, Lower Bridge Street and the Embankment, as well as in Woodston.

Bridge Street enforcement