Agenda item

Public Spaces Protection Order

Report to follow

Minutes:

Cabinet discussed recommendations from the Overview and Scrutiny Panel following a call-in by the Panel of the 25 July 2024 Cabinet decision on this matter. Cabinet was asked by the Panel to consider the concerns reported by the Overview and Scrutiny Panel at its meeting on the 20 August regarding the Public Spaces Protection Order decision. The Overview and Scrutiny Panel reported the following to Cabinet, that:

 

The Overview and Scrutiny Panel supported the aim of the proposed PSPO and considered that the PSPO was necessary for some areas of Thanet. However the Panel had some concerns that some of the detail of some aspects of the proposed PSPO may be open to question. The Panel therefore requested that Cabinet looked again at those areas to ensure that the PSPO could be smoothly implemented.”

 

Cabinet had to consider the concerns raised by the Panel and decide whether or not it should rescind its decision based on the concerns expressed by the Panel. The report set out the history of this decision including the legal history and Cabinet also noted that the Free Speech Union had written to the Council under the pre-action protocol for Judicial Review. They made it clear that they intended to challenge the PSPO if it was implemented in its current form as per the Cabinet decision on 25 July. This was a clear risk to the Council, certainly in relation to Council finances.

 

Cabinet made it clear that the Free Speech Union, while entitled to its opinion, was a private company established in December 2019 and that it was making a legal argument, for its own ideological reasons. However it framed its position at the extraordinary Panel meeting, it was not to be regarded as providing the Council with impartial legal advice and any decision made by Cabinet on the night did not mean that the Council accepted its arguments.

 

Councillors at the Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting described feeling bullied by the Free Speech Union, which was not based in Thanet and could not just be assumed to be acting in the best interests of Thanet residents. Cabinet said that the Council would not be bullied, but recognised that in responding to this challenge Cabinet needed to ensure that the Council position was as robust as it could be, in order to protect public funds. Cabinet also noted that, in a recent tweet, the Free Speech Union boasted that it had a four-person legal team and a five-person case team, together with a picture of its founder Toby Young, and a GB News headline about “Labour’s first salvo in the war of free speech”. Cabinet further said that the public could draw its own conclusions about the political independence of the Free Speech Union from material online.

 

It was also mentioned at the Overview and Scrutiny Panel that provisions in the PSPO could be benign under the current administration but misused by others in the future. However, this Order was not legislation. It was a time-limited Order that had to be renewed and could be revised or discontinued as appropriate. Thanet District Council respected the law and the right to free speech, but that right was not and never had been absolute. The previous Conservative administration introduced provisions on swearing with the first iteration of the ASB PSPO in 2018, despite recent misleading reporting by multiple media outlets who chose to believe it was a new innovation. Similar rules also applied in other local authorities and as confirmed on Tuesday, they had not been raised as an issue here by the Free Speech Union.

 

The PSPO was a very valuable tool in the armoury of measures that support the Community Safety Team to manage challenging anti-social behaviour across the Council. Cabinet observed that if the decision was taken to rescind the 25 July decision, the Council would be without this tool in its armoury. The report indicated that in this eventuality work would commence immediately towards the drafting, consultation and implementation of a new PSPO which it was expected would be for a period of three years rather than the one year of the current order. This decision involves an understanding of the legal position.

 

The legal comments in the report set this out and the confidential appendix set out a summary of the grounds for challenge as well as the Council’s legal team’s view and response to these. Councillors were reminded that if they wished to discuss any aspect of the exempt appendix then Cabinet would have had to exclude the press and public for these discussions as this could have resulted in the disclosure of exempt information in accordance with the provisions of Part 1, paragraph 5 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, that was information in respect of which a claim of legal professional privilege could be maintained in legal proceedings. However in the interests of transparency Cabinet did not want to exclude the press and public.

 

The following Members spoke under Council Procedure Rule 20.1:

 

Councillor Rogers;

Councillor Davis;

Councillor Dawson.

 

Councillor Everitt proposed, Councillor Albon seconded and Cabinet agreed the following:

 

1.  On the basis of advice from the Monitoring Officer, which was supported by the Chief Executive, the Leader proposed that Cabinet reluctantly agree to rescind its previous decision, and ask that work begins immediately to redraft and consult on a revised PSPO to cover the same issues, to be brought to Cabinet for decision as soon as possible.

Supporting documents: