An order that gives Barrow Council additional powers to clamp down on problems including dog-fouling and anti-social behaviour has been recommended for a three-year extension.
The public spaces protection order currently in place allows authorised council officers to issue fixed penalty notices of £100 for particular transgressions in public places in the borough.
The borough council’s executive committee has been advised to extend the existing PSPO, which came into force in 2019, to April 1 2025.
In a report produced ahead of the meeting, Jan Sharp, the council’s deputy director of people and place, said the council’s approach would be to ‘encourage responsible behaviour’ and only issue fixed penalty notices when guidance was not adhered to.
“Warnings may often be sufficient, and, in many areas, this may be the preferred response,” she said.
“Advice sheets will be handed out informing recipients that their behaviour breaches the order, giving them the chance to comply with the order.”
The recommendation that the current PSPO be extended would be subject to the approval of a full meeting of the council.
The PSPO prohibits people from driving vehicles ‘in a manner deemed by an authorised person to be anti-social’ and that causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm, risk or distress.
It stipulates that people must clear up after their animals unless they have reasonable excuses for failing to do so, with exemptions in place for those with assistance dogs.
It says members of the public must stop consuming alcohol or surrender any containers – sealed or unsealed – which are reasonably believed to contain alcohol when required to do so by an authorised officer.
It says a person using a psychoactive substance must stop doing so and/or surrender the substance when asked to do so by an officer.
In an effort to discourage anti-social behaviour, the order also prohibits people from congregating in groups of three or more when asked to disperse.
Ms Sharp’s report said an officer could ask a group to disperse where they reasonably suspect any person in that group to be causing or likely to cause nuisance, alarm or distress to any other person.
