No ASBO-style orders were issued by Wiltshire Council in 2019, figures

reveal.

Councils can issue Public Spaces Protection Orders to ban activities it deems ‘detrimental’ to quality of life in the area.

They can also give out Community Protection Notices, which can place legal restrictions on people whose behaviour is judged to have a similar negative

impact.

However, in 2019 the council issued no such orders, according to Freedom of Information requests submitted by the campaign group the Manifesto Club.

Across England and Wales, 8,760 CPNs were issued by 202 councils in the year to October – the highest number recorded by the civil liberties group.

And local authorities gave out 10,413 PSPOs in 2019, up from 9,930 a year earlier.

The group said CPNs have been used to ban begging, sitting on pavements, and to order people to tidy up messy gardens, while the reasons for fines for breaching PSPOs included shouting or swearing, loitering, charity collecting, and standing in groups.

Director of the Manifesto Club Josie Appleton said the test for what constitutes detrimental behaviour was 'unprecedentedly low' for criminal intervention, and that the powers were hard to appeal.

She added: “These blank-cheque busybody powers are the cause of immense injustice, and a fundamental threat to our freedoms. They should be removed from the statute book.”