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22
Mar
This is the fifth in our Trading Hell series of features investigating anti-social behaviour and crime in Harrogate town centre.
Introduced in 2014, PSPOs prohibit specified behaviours and offences from precisely delineated areas. Harrogate introduced one in August 2016 and extended it a year later for another three years. It was tailored to clamp down on street drinking inside the railway and bus stations, Victoria Shopping Centre, and the Victoria and Jubilee multi-storey car-parks. Enforcement officers had the power to ask people to stop drinking in a public place and ‘surrender’ their alcohol. Refusal to hand it over could result in a fixed penalty notice of up to £100.
But that order expired in 2020 and the pandemic lockdown meant there was no need to renew it, so there hasn’t been one in place for the past four years.
A new one is long overdue, according to Matthew Chapman, and an overwhelming majority of central Harrogate businesses appear to agree. Our Trading Hell survey found that 92% of town-centre traders support the introduction of a PSPO.
Photo: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr.
He said:
Does this mean he agrees with former Home Secretary Suella Braverman that rough sleeping is a “lifestyle choice”? He said:
The bands of professional beggars follow the crowds, he said, often moving seasonally or from event to event, and can make a lot of money:
As reported in yesterday’s Trading Hell instalment, we put these assertions to Chief Inspector Simon Williamson of North Yorkshire Police, who told us:
Told of Ch Insp Williamson’s response, Mr Chapman said:
Lincoln city centre. Photo: Lincolnian (Brian)/Flickr.
The city’s first ever PSPO was introduced in 2015. It banned the possession and consumption of “legal highs” and alcohol within a defined area of the city centre, and allowed police and council staff to either force people to hand over those substances and move on, or issue a fine if they refused to do so. The order has been renewed every three years and is due for review this year.
A separate PSPO covering three city-centre multi-storey car-parks was first enforced in October 2020. It banned drinking, drug-taking and “congregating in groups of two or more people”, as well as public urination, smoking and any activity likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to any other person.
Figures provided by the council at a meeting to discuss its extension last September show that the PSPO had its desired effect. Incidents of drug-taking dropped from 107 in the three years prior to the order to 35 over the three years the order was in force.
Over the same periods, public order offences dropped only slightly, from 189 to 150. Nevertheless, council officials felt this modest drop justified extending the PSPO for another three years.
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