Council fines issued for anti-social behaviour in Peterborough city centre drop by 60%

The number of fines issued for anti-social behaviour in Peterborough city centre by the council and partners has dropped by more than sixty per cent in six years.

Since May 2020, just 219 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) have been issued for breaches of the public space protection order (PSPO) in force in the centre, down from 13,750 in its first three years of operation.

The majority of these – some 70 per cent from 2020-22 – were for cycling on Bridge Street which is currently banned despite calls for this to be reversed, most recently by a group of Peterborough City Council (PCC) councillors and cycling campaigners.

The PSPO, which encompasses the area from Westgate down to the A15 Bourges Boulevard, gives the council the power to order people committing particular offences to leave the area and to issue a fine of up to £100 if they refuse.

These offences include littering, drinking in the street, public urination and defecation, spitting and begging in a way which is “likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress”.

Following cycling on Bridge Street, the next largest number of fines were issued for spitting (12%) and aggressive begging (5%) between 2020-22.

Fewer than 10 fines were issued for littering (4), urination (9), failure to surrender alcohol (6) and returning to the area following dispersal (2).

A PCC report on its city centre PSPO suggests that this “significantly lower” level of enforcement was because its officers were diverted to its pandemic response for around a year in 2020-21.

But it also says that, until January 2020, PCC carried out enforcement alongside Kingdom Services Group at which point their contract ended and the responsibility fell to six in-house officers.

Over the last six years, anti-social behaviour in the PSPO area appears to have risen, with 515 incidents reported to police in 2021-22, up from 318 in 2018-19.

Violence and sexual offences reports have more than doubled in the area – from 415 to 1,072 – while drugs offences have more than tripled and vehicle offences increased sevenfold.

PCC says it is currently pursuing an application with the Department for Transport to allow it to enforce against certain traffic offences such as vehicles entering Long Causeway.

It’s also currently in the process of renewing its city centre PSPO which expires every three years.

This is supported by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough police, the council says, as well as all of the 41 people who responded to its consultation survey – although five weren't in favour of unauthorised cycling remaining prohibited.

PCC’s new PSPO is expected to be largely the same as it has been over the last three years, although it will now also include the cathedral precincts and surrounding grounds (the cathedral itself is covered by another PSPO).

The city centre PSPO also covers part of Broadway, Westgate and Long Causeway which are the streets where the most anti-social behaviour in the area is reported, according to police statistics.

It also encompasses the streets around the Queensgate Shopping Centre, car park and bus depot.

A final decision on renewing the PSPO is expected next week.