Campaign groups seek protection from Leicester anti-social rules
Campaign groups have joined forces to write a letter to Leicester's city mayor seeking assurances they are exempt from a new anti-social behaviour order.The city council put a new public spaces protection order (PSPO) in place from April to tackle issues including e-scooters, drinking, playing loud music and begging.However the groups, which include unions, political parties and other campaigners, fear the order could "constitute an unjustified limit on their democratic rights" as the ban also includes "unauthorised structures" such as banners, stalls and tables.Leicester City Council said there were processes in place to allow freedom of speech, which remain unchanged under the new rules.
The order, which is valid for three years, covers the city centre inside the ring road and includes Leicester railway station, all of New Walk and the area between London Road and Regent Road as far as Granville Road.It has given police and council officers greater powers to take enforcement action against anyone deemed to be causing a nuisance in the area.The new rules also aim to clamp down on anyone who is either caught collecting for charity or who puts up a gazebo without prior permission from the city council.It was introduced after more than 1,000 residents responded to a consultation, with nine of out 10 people supporting the action to address unlicensed amplification and loudspeakers.As of May, an individual breaching the order could be given a £100 on the spot fine, and the fixed penalty notice could rise to £1,000 if a prosecution results in a conviction.
In the letter to Sir Peter Soulsby, the former city mayoral and socialist candidate, Steve Score, said on behalf of the organisations that many groups had regularly campaigned on Saturdays and at other times for decades and had "never been anti-social"."To prohibit these groups from peacefully, and without causing a public nuisance, carrying out their regular campaigning would constitute an unjustified limit on their democratic rights to free speech," he wrote."We are sure that you did not intend the PSPO to be used in this way, so we are seeking assurances that trade unions, campaign groups, political parties and others will be exempt from this PSPO."Last month, religious groups received warning notices for the way they promote their faith to shoppers.They told the BBC they were handed warnings for using loudspeakers and setting up street stalls and banners near the Clock Tower.Members of the groups said they felt they had been unfairly targeted as a public nuisance for exercising their right to religious free speech.In response, Sir Peter said the order did not ban religious groups from the city centre but aimed to deter them from "unnecessary and intensely irritating behaviour".In a statement the city council added: "The PSPO does not restrict freedom of speech but it does restrict the nuisance of amplifiers, gazebos and other structures that more than 1,100 respondents to our consultation told us negatively impacted their experience of Leicester city centre."Many groups have been respectful of this so far and, as a result, the environment in the city centre is noticeably improved."There are clear processes already in place to ensure that the right to protest can be freely exercised, which remain unchanged under the new arrangements."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
21 minutes ago
- Sky News
Trump's administration reviews AUKUS submarine deal with Britain and Australia
The US has launched a formal review of the multi-billion pound AUKUS submarine deal with the UK and Australia. The defence pact, which is developing a new fleet of nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines for the UK and Australia, was agreed under Joe Biden 's administration in 2021. The alliance, which also covers collaboration on other advanced technologies, is seen as an attempt to counter the influence of China. But Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's top policy advisor, is among vocal sceptics in Donald Trump 's administration. "We are reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the President's America First agenda," a US official said. "Any changes to the administration's approach for AUKUS will be communicated through official channels, when appropriate." AUKUS envisages Australia acquiring up to five US Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from 2032 before the UK and Australia design and build a new class of submarine with US assistance. Australia's defence minister Richard Marles said on Thursday he was confident the pact would still go ahead and his government would work closely with the US while Mr Trump's administration conducts a review. "This is a multi-decade plan. There will be governments that come and go and I think whenever we see a new government, a review of this kind is going to be something which will be undertaken," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It comes ahead of Mr Trump's first expected meeting with Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Canada. Security allies will discuss a request from Washington for Australia to increase defence spending from 2% to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). AUKUS is at the centre of the UK's planned expansion of its submarine fleet, with up to 12 attack submarines expected to be built for the Royal Navy. The deal is said to be worth more than £175bn. When it was signed, all three countries - the US, UK and Australia - had different leaders. In May, the US president's new ambassador, Warren Stephens, used his first public speech to back the partnership, highlighting how "vital the US-UK relationship is to our countries and to the world". A UK government spokesperson said: "AUKUS is a landmark security and defence partnership with two of our closest allies. "It is one of the most strategically important partnerships in decades, supporting peace and security in the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic, while also delivering jobs and economic growth in communities across all three nations."
Telegraph
41 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Britain ‘becoming a national health state' under Reeves
Britain is becoming a 'national health state' under Rachel Reeves, with treatment poised to account for half of all public services spending by the end of the decade. Analysis by the Resolution Foundation said the Chancellor was presiding over a 'major reshaping of the state' that will pave the way for more tax rises after she boosted NHS budgets in the spending review. The Left-leaning think tank said the health service was on course to account for almost £1 in every £2 of all day-to-day Whitehall spending by the next election. This is up from a third in 2010 and a quarter in 1999. Health accounts for 90pc of the extra public service spending over the next three years at the expense of other Whitehall departments, the Resolution Foundation said. This includes defence, which saw a much smaller increase in its day-to-day spending budget, although investment spending for tanks, planes and military bases saw a much bigger increase. The think tank warned that this trend had led to 'shrunken public services elsewhere'. It noted that while real, per-person funding for health was set to increase by 36pc between 2009 and 2029, spending on prisons and the courts would fall by 16pc while housing and local government budgets were on course to fall by 50pc over the same period. British families are already on the hook for the equivalent of £1,550 of tax rises after October's record £40bn raid by the Chancellor. But Ruth Curtice, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said people faced more pain in the coming months. She said: 'The spending review was a huge deal as the Chancellor set out details of nearly £300bn of extra spending over the second half of the [current] parliament. But as the dust settles a few clear winners have emerged. 'The extra money in this spending review has already been accounted for in the last forecast. But a weaker economic outlook and the unfunded changes to winter fuel payments mean the Chancellor will likely need to look again at tax rises in the autumn.' Ms Reeves has been accused of sacrificing police and defence spending in favour of a record NHS handout, with households now facing higher council tax bills to pay to keep their streets safe. Treasury documents revealed that the Government was already forecasting a 5pc increase in council tax each year until 2028, meaning an extra £395 for the average B and D band properties. Ms Reeves's plans also show that total non-defence investment will suffer cuts on average for the rest of this parliament.
Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Britain's electricity grid is dangerously outdated
Built for a different era, Britain's electricity grid is now creaking under the weight of the energy transition, and no one is fully in charge of fixing it. Some of the equipment still in use dates from the 1950s. And the software that runs the grid? That was written before the current electricity market even existed. Both physical and digital infrastructure are suffering from decades of underinvestment as the connection of renewables has been prioritised above all else. Evidence shows substantial legacy equipment installed between 1955 and 1975, much of which remains in service. Last year, a report for energy regulator Ofgem by Cambridge Economic Policy Associates (CEPA) found that a third of transformers and 30pc of switch gear were built in the 1970s, as were just over half of all power cables. The transformer that blew up at North Hyde in March, causing the Heathrow blackout, dated back to the 1960s. More than a third of other grid equipment, from protection relays to communications systems to fire suppression, was built before the 1970s. The same CEPA report indicated that some of the grid's most important control systems typically only last 10 to 20 years before needing replacement, and that traditional network assets (overhead lines, underground cables, transformers, and switchgear) generally last between 41 and 70 years. This suggests a lot of grid assets are pushing the boundaries of their expected lives. The obsolescence risks associated with modern smart grid infrastructure are higher. The report notes these devices 'are often tightly integrated with software and specialised equipment that quickly become obsolete ... The typical software and equipment lifecycle of 10 to 15 years can limit the technical lives of these assets'. The fragility of the digital infrastructure was highlighted recently. May 29 was a day of high wind output, but there was a lot less wind than expected the day before, which is when most power trading takes place. Lots of exports on UK interconnector cables were booked, and not all could be reversed on the day. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that until 10am, the within-day wind forecast was significantly higher than the already inaccurate day-ahead forecast. At its height, the difference between actual wind output and the forecasts was 4.5 GW. This represented 28pc of wind output at the time and 17pc of demand, a huge discrepancy for the National Energy System Operator (Neso) to manage. That day, the Neso's control room had to implement almost 25,000 balancing actions, turning down wind and tweaking gas power stations' output in an effort to keep the grid running properly. All this was done on software built in the 1980s. A literal relic of the days of privatisation, this software pre-dates the current market structure, known as NETA (New Electricity Trading Arrangements), which replaced the original post-privatisation structure in 2001. There are increasingly frequent outages on the system that connects the Neso control room with the control systems of power stations. When this happens, Neso staff must revert to notifying their instructions by telephone. Some 25,000 balancing actions in one day represents 17 a minute – clearly not something the small control room team can do manually. Had the software gone down that day, keeping the lights on would have been a matter of prayers as control room staff would have had to revert to a simpler way of doing things: getting wind off the system, bringing up all available gas plants, and, if necessary, suspending exports. Doing this would have made balancing by phone feasible, and would have removed a major source of variability that challenges system balance: wind. Not only can wind output swing dramatically, Neso uses inadequate forecasting tools that are widely criticised within the industry for their poor accuracy. A major project to replace the ancient balancing system, begun in 2014, was cancelled last year after a decade of failure, with no visibility on when the new replacement will be operational. Neso recently launched an audit of its demand forecasting, indicating its models had not been reviewed in '10-20 years'. That is despite the significant changes represented by the introduction of renewables, many of which are connected to low-voltage grids over which Neso has little visibility (and which appear as negative demand in Neso's systems). Many parts of the grid still rely on control systems developed decades ago, well before the smart grid era. One such system is SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), which allows operators to monitor and control grid equipment remotely. In some cases, these systems are running on obsolete software like Windows 3.1 or early versions of Windows XP, long out of support and riddled with known vulnerabilities. In power stations, these controls are sometimes used for synchronising generators with the grid, a safety-critical function. These outdated systems are far more susceptible to cyberattacks, hardware failure and compatibility issues with modern infrastructure. The Grid Code – the rulebook for the electricity system – says remarkably little about digital control systems. There's no mention of software integrity, cybersecurity or the use of obsolete platforms like Windows 3.1. As demand on the grid increases and the system becomes more complex, continuing to rely on decades-old physical and digital infrastructure represents a growing threat to resilience. Yet, shockingly, no one has responsibility for ensuring industry rules will guarantee a secure system, leaving us in the hands of the original architects of a grid that bears little resemblance to today's power market.
