People who commit any of a series of ‘repulsive’ behaviours in York could soon be issued with on-the-spot fines.
Plans are being drawn up to dish out instant justice to those who carry out one of four anti-social offences.
Those issued with a penalty notice would be fined £100 under the scheme.
Cllr Michael Pavlovic, City of York Council lead on housing, planning and safer communities, is to consider introducing a city-wide Public Space Protection Order (PSPO).
It would enable council enforcement officers to fine people for:
- street urination and defecation
- dog fouling,
- and lack of dog control.
Cllr Pavlovic said: “Each of those, in their own different ways, is a significant problem – particularly with the street urination, particularly in the city centre in the evenings and after race meetings.”
Previously, when someone was caught in the act, the only way to penalise them was to prosecute through the courts.
“The PSPO will introduce a fixed penalty notice so it’s an on the spot fine, essentially,” Cllr Pavlovic said.
“When you talk to both residents and and and businesses, you know the issue of coming to find pools of urine in your shop doorway is one that we should be trying to do something to address, and we just feel that this is a proportionate way to respond.”
Fining someone £100 for allowing their dog to foul the pavement would bring the penalty closer to the existing £120 fine for littering, he said.
“By bringing it closer into line with that, it just shows that we as a council understand just how repulsive people in the city find this.”
Dog control
As for the dog control offence, Cllr Pavlovic said “this sits in between a very low level dog control notice, and the civil dog control for a dog dangerously out of control or a dog-on-dog attack.
“So the proposed PSPO condition is aimed at dogs that repeatedly, for example, escape from gardens, and they don’t attack anybody but they still frighten people. .
“The previous policy was that you’d then have to issue a warning and then wait for that warning to be breached before you could issue a fixed penalty notice on that as well.”
He said serious or repeated offences could still go to court. But the instant fines would act as a deterrent: “Somebody only has to get one fine, and the likelihood of them doing it again is much reduced.”
The council’s neighbourhood enforcement officers who patrol the city in the evenings would be given the power to levy the fines under the scheme.
They might be directed to an offender by those monitoring York’s CCTV cameras.
People given a penalty would have a certain number of days to pay it. “We’ve found that when fixed penalty notices have been issued, the vast majority of them get paid,” Cllr Pavlovic told YorkMix.
The next step is to put the plan for a York-wide Public Space Protection Order out for an eight-week consultation.
Cllr Pavlovic said: “We will obviously talk with the Chief Constable, the deputy mayor, shop and business owners. It will go out to our consultees, and then it will come back to me for a decision.”