Draft Anti-social Behaviour (Authorised Persons) Order 2015
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Blears, Hazel (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
† Dowd, Jim (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
† Featherstone, Lynne (Minister for Crime Prevention)
† Flello, Robert (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
† Henderson, Gordon (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
† Hinds, Damian (East Hampshire) (Con)
McDonnell, John (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
† Newmark, Mr Brooks (Braintree) (Con)
† Nuttall, Mr David (Bury North) (Con)
† Pincher, Christopher (Tamworth) (Con)
† Reed, Mr Steve (Croydon North) (Lab)
Robinson, Mr Geoffrey (Coventry North West) (Lab)
† Scott, Mr Lee (Ilford North) (Con)
Shannon, Jim (Strangford) (DUP)
† Vickers, Martin (Cleethorpes) (Con)
† Weatherley, Mike (Hove) (Con)
† Wilson, Phil (Sedgefield) (Lab)
Katya Simms, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
Third Delegated Legislation Committee
Monday 23 February 2015
[Mr Mike Weir in the Chair]
Draft Anti-social Behaviour (Authorised Persons) Order 2015
4.30 pm
The Minister for Crime Prevention (Lynne Featherstone): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Anti-social Behaviour (Authorised Persons) Order 2015.
What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. The order was laid before Parliament on 14 January 2015. Its purpose is to enable local authorities to authorise a housing provider to issue community protection notices under section 43 and fixed penalty notices under section 52 of chapter 1 of part 4 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.
Community protection notices came into force on 20 October 2014 and are designed to stop antisocial behaviour that spoils a community’s quality of life. Community protection notices can be issued to individuals over the age of 16, to a business or to an organisation if the issuing body is “satisfied on reasonable grounds” that the individual’s or body’s conduct is having a detrimental effect on the lives of those in the locality, is of a “persistent or continuing nature” and is unreasonable; for example, noise nuisance, littering, fly-tipping or graffiti.
The notice may impose a requirement to stop doing certain things, to do certain things or to take reasonable steps to achieve certain results to ensure that the behaviour does not happen again. However, before a notice can be issued, a written warning must be issued to the person committing the antisocial behaviour, and they must be given sufficient time to deal with the matter.
Failure to comply with a community protection notice without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence, subject to a fixed penalty notice or prosecution. A person found guilty on summary conviction may receive a fine. However, a person given a fixed penalty notice may discharge any liability to conviction for the offence if they pay the penalty amount of up to £100 within 14 days.
Community protection notices and fixed penalty notices can be issued by local authorities, the police and police community support officers if they are designated by their chief constable. The legislation also allows a person designated by the relevant local authority to issue such notices. Only persons specified in an order made by the Secretary of State may be designated in that way, and we think that there is a formal role for housing providers. That includes a housing trust, a housing action trust, a non-profit private provider of social housing, a landlord under a secure tenancy or, in relation to Wales, a Welsh body registered as a social landlord.
Housing providers in England and Wales manage a vast number of dwellings and deal with thousands of complaints of antisocial behaviour every year. The order will allow designated housing providers to use community
protection notices and fixed penalty notices to better protect victims of antisocial behaviour, while working with their local authorities, the police and other agencies. The order introduces a relatively minor but important provision that complements the wider reforms under the 2014 Act, putting victims at the heart of the response to antisocial behaviour and giving front-line professionals the flexibility they need to protect the public. I commend the order to the Committee.4.33 pm
Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab): I have just a couple of questions to put to the Minister. The first is about a specific aspect of community protection notices, which is the intention for them to be used to deal with dangerous dog ownership. During the passage of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, we said that we believed the CPN to be a relatively slow and expensive way to deal with that problem. That view was supported by a number of animal charities and the police, as well as a series of dog owners’ representative groups.
Scotland has a much more effective system; the dog control order can be served much more quickly than the CPN, which is what the Government are proposing. Has the Minister had any further representations on this subject from any of those organisations or from elsewhere, and does her Department intend to review the powers under the Act once they come into force?
Secondly, will the Minister confirm the date by which she expects all the provisions in the Act to be fully enforced, particularly the injunctions to prevent nuisance and disorder, for which I believe the regulations are still awaited?
4.35 pm
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab): It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Weir.
Although I welcome the proposals, I have some observations. There is the context in which the powers will operate. Allowing housing providers to use the provisions is good, but that needs to be seen against both the front-line police cuts and local council cuts. In instances of antisocial behaviour in my constituency, time and again I find that it is almost irrelevant what powers there are, because, by the time someone has phoned the police or the local authority antisocial behaviour team, either the problem has moved on or the perpetrators of the problem are no longer to be seen. In ongoing situations, the police and the local authority antisocial behaviour teams are so bogged down with all the other things that they have to do, the priority is such, that these things get pushed far down the line.
I will not detain the Committee, but I want to highlight the examples that I have in mind. In the case of the behaviour of a tiny minority effectively holding local residents hostage, empowering housing associations and the like to use the powers is a helpful step in some ways, but I do not think that that is necessarily the answer. For example, near Tawney Crescent or Weston Heights in my constituency, youths might play football, but deliberately use that football almost as a weapon against local residents, kicking it against front doors, into front gardens, and aiming at cars. By the time anybody is
contacted—the police, the local authority or indeed the housing association—pursuing a CPN is not an easy thing to do.Similarly with noise nuisance, my office gets a lot of complaints about residents being antisocial towards their neighbours. The provision might be a step forward, but if it gets bogged down in the detail of how the local housing authority or association—the not-for-profit provider—can use the CPN, it might not necessarily be the answer. I would welcome the Minister’s observations and comments on that.
Another nuisance is off-road motorbikes. There is a lovely piece of woodland not far from where I live in my constituency. It is used regularly by dog walkers and people taking their small children out. Frequently—at weekends, for example—off-road motorbikes tear through that piece of ground, completely illegally, without any permission at all from the local authority landowner. It is a further example of all the powers in the world not being able to identify the bike that has nearly run someone over. The last thing anyone sees is a blur in the distance as it goes tearing off. I worry that before too long there will be a fatality somewhere in my constituency caused by one of those off-road bikes.
On the point about dangerous dogs—or, more to the point, dangerous dog owners—I look forward to hearing what the Minister will say in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North. Is the measure really the best way to address the problem, or would a Scottish-type model be a better way?
4.39 pm
Lynne Featherstone: I thank the Committee for a constructive debate and for the important points that have been raised. I doubt whether there is an MP in the House who does not understand the issues, which are raised daily in our surgeries, relating to neighbour disputes, neighbour noise, dogs, fencing, dumping and front gardens, for example. It is a litany. I have written many times—like others in the Committee, I am sure—to my local authority or to various housing associations in order for a remedy to be prescribed. It is a long and tortuous process, and it does not always come to a happy conclusion or cessation. The aim and ambition behind the measure is to curtail poor behaviour at an earlier stage, through an earlier intervention. I am sure that all of us would hugely welcome that.
Community protection notices could be used to deal with dog-related antisocial behaviour where the legal test is met. For example, if an owner is not bothering to repair their fencing and their dog keeps getting through into other gardens, the notice could require them to repair the inadequate fencing, particularly if the dog escapes regularly and causes antisocial behaviour. Where agencies have received complaints of dog-related antisocial behaviour, the notice could require the irresponsible dog owner to muzzle their dog or put it on a lead in public. There is generally more than one report about those kinds of behaviour.
If there is a frightening dog in an owner’s home, something could not be done if it were a one-off incident. However, if it were persistent—the word “persistent” comes up persistently in this issue; I am sorry for laughing at my own jokes—and it were felt that reasonable steps should be taken by the owner to prevent that from
happening, a notice could be served requiring dog training, for example. The Home Office has received no further representations on the issue. However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs may have received some representations, as that is within its policy remit.The hon. Member for Croydon North asked about the provisions in the rest of the Act. There is one outstanding, which is the civil injunction to replace the antisocial behaviour order. While all the other powers were introduced in October 2014, except the one in the order that we are debating, the civil injunction is yet to be commenced. It has been delayed due to the need to consult and to make arrangements for legal aid changes to support its introduction. Agreement to publish the Government response to the legal aid consultation was delayed while the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice came to a final agreement on the costs of implementation and meeting additional costs arising from commencement. Subject to Parliament, we now expect the civil injunction to commence on Monday 23 March.
I trust that I have made the case for the order to be approved by the Committee. Everyone wants to live in a safe, secure and welcoming environment. I think it is also true to say that Members of Parliament across the House would welcome a resolution that stepped back from eviction or even noise abatement notices, which take an awful lot of preparation, letter writing and encouragement. It is important that the job of dealing with this type of behaviour does not fall to any one agency. The right body or person should have the powers required to deal with any situation affecting their community and to tailor their response accordingly. That is why the community protection notice is available to local authorities, the police and police community support officers where designated.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South; I forgot about his rogue motorbikes. I have them in my constituency, and they are indeed a difficult and intractable problem because someone has to be there at that moment. That is, in the end, a policing issue, whatever the issues with local authorities, cuts or anything else. It would not be served particularly well by this notice, unless the owner of the bike causing the nuisance could be identified—in that case, possibly.
In many communities, housing providers are already dealing with complaints of antisocial behaviour. Most act professionally and in the best interests of their communities. We therefore feel that it is right to extend the order to housing providers. There are safeguards in place to ensure that the community protection notice is used proportionately by local agencies. With the Committee’s forbearance, I will take another couple of minutes to discuss those, as it is important to have the right language in the order.
First, the requirement to give a written warning before issuing a notice ensures that individuals are clear that if they do not stop the antisocial behaviour, they could be issued with a community protection notice. In addition, enough time must be left between serving the written warning and issuing the notice to allow the individual or the body to deal with the matter; so if they are going to improve their behaviour or repair the fence or whatever, there has to be adequate time for them to do so.
Secondly, it is only right that the person served with a notice should have the opportunity to appeal against it. An appeal must be made to a magistrates court within 21 days of being issued with a notice, and it can be made on the following grounds: the conduct specified in the notice did not take place, has not had a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality, has not been of a persistent or continuing nature, is not unreasonable, or is conduct that the person cannot reasonably be expected to control; any of the requirements in the notice, or any of the periods within which or times by which they are to be complied with, are unreasonable; that there is material defect or error in, or in connection with, the notice; and that the notice was issued to the wrong person.
In July 2014, the Home Office published statutory guidance for front-line professionals on how the new antisocial behaviour powers could be used, including
the community protection notice. The guidance is intended for all agencies that deal with complaints of antisocial behaviour and have access to the new powers under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, including housing providers.Approval of the order will ensure that a wider range of agencies have the opportunity to access the community protection notice so that the most appropriate professionals can deal with complaints of environmental antisocial behaviour. The Secretary of State retains the ability to allow more agencies to have access to the power if a strong enough case can be made. I hope that the Committee will be supportive of the order as part of our wider approach to protecting victims and communities from the harmful effects of antisocial behaviour. I commend the order to the Committee.