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news
Magic Roundabout in Hemel Hempstead (licensed CC BY SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons by Obukit)Hemel Hempstead PSPO bans defecating, urinating, spitting and ... cycling in town centre
Hemel Hempstead, the Hertfordshire town hitherto perhaps best known for the UK’s most confusing roundabout now has a new claim to fame – but a recently introduced Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) there is also attracting attention, given that besides banning defecating or urinating in the street, it also bans cycling, among other things.
PSPOs, likened by the charity Cycling UK to “effectively an ASBO for everyone who cycles” in the parts of town and city centres where they are enforced, have been introduced in a number of places in England, with Bedford, Mansfield and Peterborough among the local authorities to use them to ban cycling in specific areas.
And now, in Hemel Hempstead, if you piss, shit or spit in public, it seems your behaviour is viewed by the council as being as reprehensible as that of people who ride bicycles or skateboards.
Solicitor and former judge Kerry Underwood flagged up the PSPO on Twitter today. The replies are well worth a read.
Hemel Hempstead's new Public Spaces Protection Order bans the following in the town centre: spitting, urinating, defecating and cycling.
— Kerry Underwood (@kerry_underwood) September 1, 2019
Here’s what Dacorum Borough Council says about the PSPO on its website:
New orders target anti-social behaviour in the borough
We're introducing two new Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) to control anti-social behaviour and dog activity in the borough.
Cycling and skateboarding in an area of Hemel Hempstead town centre will carry a £75 fine under the PSPO, which also bans spitting (including discharge of chewing gum), urinating or defecating in a public place.
The other PSPO promotes responsible dog ownership across the borough. This order covers five areas, including failure to pick up after your dog, failure to carry a dog poo bag and failure to keep your dog out of play areas.
Dog owners will be required to keep their dogs three metres away from unfenced play areas in the borough, including the one in Gadebridge Park.
The PSPOs come into effect on Monday 29 July 2019.
Dog owners will be required to keep their dogs three metres away from unfenced play areas in the borough, including the one in Gadebridge Park.
When the PSPO was introduced, Councillor llr Julie Banks, Portfolio Holder for Community and Regulatory Services, said: “Both PSPOs are vitally important to ensure residents can enjoy their community and promote responsible dog ownership. We don't want to stop people enjoying themselves but we do want to tackle the behaviour of the minority whose behaviour has a detrimental impact on the lives of others.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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I’m not local to this area, but it has been an overnight staging-post at Christmas on some occasions. It’s one of those town centres that right-thinking people get clear of by 6 o’clock. Map 2 is the cycling ban area, a lot of it is water and the reasonably decent river gardens they did up a couple of years ago, then there’s a market place and The Marlowes pedestrianised bit, where I think they also have market stalls, so where goes market trader also goes white van. And no cycling in Debenhams and T K Maxx either! I can’t see any public loos in my mind’s eye but maybe that explains why the prohibition in that regard.
Down with this sort of thing!
Councillor Julie Banks, Portfolio Holder for Community and Regulatory Services, said: "we do want to tackle the behaviour of the minority whose behaviour has a detrimental impact on the lives of others".
So that would include all motorists then?
All humans in fact. I'm rethinking visiting there.
Or the minority that are the Councillors
Can I poo in the street if I carry a poo bag? These sort of questions must be asked.
How ridiculous is 'failure to carry a dog poo bag'?
Does this apply to cyclists, or just dog walkers, or EVERYONE?
What's the definition of a dog poo bag? If it contains dog shit, is it still a dog poo bag? I'm just trying to get around having to carry a bag and picking up your dog's shit. Decisions, decisions.
Thanks Dacorum Borough Council for making life so difficult.
Most PSPOs mean not carrying at least one poo bag if you're walking your dog, since otherwise how were you planning on cleaning up after it...?
What if you just used it and binned it, can you still get fined for not having one?
Yea, I believe so, otherwise what would you do if your dog was more - er - regular?
I think my councils own PSPO make it clear you have to carry several bags Just In Case.
That said, I always take a handful of bags out with me when my dog gets his walk, in case he goes more than once; I've also had to give a bag to someone who'd "forgotten" one.
But this is all very OT from Hemel Hempstead sh!tting on cycling as a transport choice, I think...
Nice summary!
Carrying a dog poo bag is not stated in the PSPO, it requires 'must have with them an appropriate means to pick up dog faeces', so it's all down to what that means in practice or if anyone would really want to go to court to debate the intricacies of PSPO enforcement as it relates to the brown subject matter.
Well that’s put the kybosh on the inaugural Hemel Hempstead city centre Paula Radcliffe Duathlon.
That made me laugh out loud in the office
...
I'd hope the way this will work in practice is that those cycling through the area - especially roads like Queensway - which is a through road and clearly designed for all traffic - won't have to change their behaviour. That activity isn't a threat to the area, whereas yoofs hanging about on bikes and looking to grab phones out of pedestrian's hands certainly would be.
This order - made by a cash strapped and under-resourced council - gives the power to move people on if they are not behaving.
However, the PSPO isn't targetting 'problem' cyclists, it's designed to criminalise ALL cyclists.
[/quote]
However, the PSPO isn't targetting 'problem' cyclists, it's designed to criminalise ALL cyclists.
[/quote]
Well unfortunately that's just the world we live in. I had a lovely time at Canoe Lake, Southsea over the bank holiday weekend where there were lots of others enjoying themselves, some of which were drinking alcohol as they ate their picnics on the grass. Criminals all of them of course, since there's a blanket alcohol ban in that location. I didn't see any carted off to the cells.
And yet whenever there have been similar PSPOs, they've been used to harass otherwise law-abiding cyclists.
People who drink alcohol aren't considered to be part of an out-group, whereas it's become part of our mythology to demonise cyclists.
The words, "hammer", "nut" and "sledge" spring to mind. I can appreciate the need for some means of taking action action against ant-social yoofs pulling wheelies in the pedestrian zones but the area in question includes many 'normal' access roads on which motorised traffic will still be permitted so, as Giblet points out, the council would need some sort of traffic order which would be open to challenge.
I also see that students travelling to West Herts college by bike would be expected to walk the last couple of hundred yards. Can't you just imagine a few enforcement jobsworths staking out the front gate to pick off some easy targets rather than going after the aforementioned wheelie-pulling yoofs? How does all this tie in with the general policy of encouraging and facilitating cycling?
This is the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead model of encouraging and facilitating cycling, which facilitates and encourages cycling whilst prosecuting anyone who facilitates or encourages cycling.
There isn't a general policy of encouraging / facilitating cycling. There is a general policy of councils, Government etc *telling* you that they want to maybe think about seeing if they could consider encouraging while then doing everything possible to quietly DIScourage it.
I moved away from Hemel 29 years ago, and certainly won't be moving back any time soon. The pedestrianised town centre used to be really bustling when I was a kid but is now dying - banning cyclists will only hasten its demise.
And so, the interchangeable non-descript boring small-towns of England (urbia generica?), slowly moved to deal with the terrifying scourge of sustainable travel, all in lock-step, desperate to avoid the horror of finding themselves posessing anything resembling a distinguishing characteristic.
It does appear from the map with the order that you cannot ride a bicycle on many of the roads within the so called Town Centre.
This seems to directly impact people going about lawful business, there appears no restriction on driving a motor powered vehicle.
Not having seen the roads after this order was created, as streetview is from April 2019, they will need to install multiple road signs, each with a Traffic Regulation Order, to make the PSPO work. Locals could object to the TRO.
Having said that looking at the centre of Hemel Hempstead on Google maps does not make me ever want to go there, looks like a wasteland.
I can only see a short section of Bridge Street being affected. Why this is included seems peculiar and may be an error?
http://www.dacorum.gov.uk/docs/default-source/licensing-documents/policies/pspo-(town-centre)-2019.pdf?sfvrsn=2. Plan 2
However, based on the principles of Councillior Banks: "We don't want to stop people enjoying themselves but we do want to tackle the behaviour of the minority whose behaviour has a detrimental impact on the lives of others.” then only those cycling in an anti-social manner should get an FPN.
Alternatively, based on the approach of a blanket ban for an entire user group, all persons and dogs should be banned from the Town centre "in case" they may offend.
Interestingly the dog PSPO says nothing in the order applies to a registered blind person, it doesn't say they have to have a trained guide dog with them so if you could set up a blind person dog walking service the dogs could defecate all over without penalty according to the wording.
So outside the area of the PSPO it's ok to cycle, piss and shit?
I'm riding to Hemel Hempstead, towing a skateboard with a dog on it, where I plan to piss, shit, ride, skate and encourage my dog to do the same, all at the same time.
Since when was riding a bike equivalent to defecating in public? And like RBWM, surely there must be some local cyclists who could contact their councillors and suggest that they might like to remove their heads from their rectums?
On the plus side after you have been fined for cycling there you can take a revenge shit for no extra cost.
Can I make a prediction - stupid shit like this,,,,, effectivily banning people from riding bikes, despite the fact that the roads as we know then resulted from people riding bikes in the 1800s telling the national and local government that they wanted the roads sorting out so that they could get from A to B safely and as detailed in Carlton Reids wonderful book 'Roads Were Not Built For Cars',,,,,, stupid shit like this will become increasingly common.
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