Open Spaces Everywhere but Not a Spot to Drink

Disclosure; I like a drink. In fact I'm having a drink while writing this now. I went to the 'Robin Hood Beer Festival' and enjoyed heavily hopped strong ales (unfined ones only, I can out beersnob CAMRA). I drink at home, in my garden, in pubs, round friends' houses but I can't honestly remember the last time I drank in an outdoor public place. Of course, the fact that I can't remember it...

So anyway, today I'm writing about Designated Public Places Orders because NCC has embarked on the first steps of establishing one across the entire city and I don't think I like it. There already are small DPPOs in various parts of the city but, to paraphrase Niemoller, when they came for Hyson Green I did nothing. And when they came for me, I thought I'd better write a blogpost.

Oh yes, I should explain what a DPPO is. Broadly speaking, if a local authority thinks that boozy ne'er do wells are making a nuisance of themselves in a particular area, it can make an order making that area as a Designated Public Place. Once it is in place, this gives the police, PCSOs and CPOs the right to order anyone drinking alcohol in the designated area to stop doing so and to hand over any alcohol they might have with them. If you refuse either without 'reasonable excuse', you are guilty of a criminal offence. It's not the actual drinking that matters but the refusing to stop and give it up that lands you in trouble. One last thing to note is that whether a DPPO is made or not, police have separate powers to stop underage drinkers and confiscate their alcohol.

My first thought was that this would hardly be popular with nice middle class voters who like to pop down the Arboretum with a picnic and a crisp Chardonnay. But no, JoCo's introductory report explains that it's not about them -

"Any powers arising from an Order are not intended to disrupt peaceful activities, for example families or groups having a picnic and consuming alcohol in the Proposed Area, but are solely intended for use as a control measure for the consumption of alcohol in public places by those who cause anti-social behaviour..." 

So the rozzers have discretion, they can pick and choose who they march up to and demand surrender of some of their property. That's completely reasonable don't you think? I mean what could possibly go wrong? I'm sure that black people will be treated with EXACTLY the same level of discretion as they receive when our wonderful police execute their stop and search powers for example. As for CPOs...

What's also interesting, and not a little ironic, is that at the same full council meeting a motion praising 'well run' pubs as community assets, lamenting the loss of local pubs, bigging up the beer festival and local breweries and continuing the battle against the sale of 'strong alcohol' and other 'irresponsible drinking' stuff was passed.

Ok, in isolation there really isn't a word in that motion that I would disagree with but, looking at the wider picture, including DPPOs, it gives the impression of a mixed message. It also has a nasty taste of the double standards. I'll come back to this in a sec.

One of the things I slightly object to is this rather romantic notion of the great traditional British boozer. I'm sorry but it's 95% bollocks. A hell of a lot of pubs are simply meat markets, pre-fight gatherings or hopelessly garish theme parks. Let me tell you about one 'local' 'community' pub.

When I first moved into my current address I thought I'd check out the local scenery. Food shopping was the priority but as I walked round the corner, barely 300 yards from my home, I came across a pub. That's handy, I thought, an actual 'local'. On getting a bit closer, for some reason I started thinking that actually, I probably wouldn't be going in that particular pub after all. There was something about it. And I never did.

About 15 months after this a young chap had his brains blown out in the car park. Turns out this particular pub was unofficially under the control of Nottingham's favourite Robin Hoods the Gunns and somebody they didn't like overreacted to a perceived sleight. You'll have read about the consequences. The pub was called the Sporting Chance and is one of those 'neighbourhood pubs' that have closed down. In this case bulldozed and a housing estate built over it.

The point I'm trying to make here is that pubs as drinking venues aren't always great. I know the motion specifies 'well run' pubs but clearly nobody thought the Chance was badly run because it was still trading quite happily until what happened. I know for a fact it wasn't the only pub the Gunns held sway over either.

The other point is that, even after spending the evening in a 'well run' pub, you don't suddenly sober up once you walk out the door. It's not the where that matters, it's the 'how much' and the 'what sort of person are you when drunk'. Drinking in an excellent pub does not guarantee an absence of anti-social behaviour, as anybody making their way through Slab Square late at night will tell you.

As for the 'strong alcohol' objection, most of the beers I drank at the NCC sponsored beer festival were in the range of 6-7% and utterly fantastic they were too. Both Brewdog and newcomer the Ned Ludd sell beers with a strength in excess of 10%. But as these venues are the preferred destinations of the Sherwood 'Laddie Daddies' who have a lot of money to spend in the City Centre presumably none of that matters.

To bring it all back here, my view is that NCC's attitude to alcohol is that there is a right way to do it and an undesirable way. Middle class people sipping a crisp white in the park or lads after football practice quaffing craft ales in an oak beamed saloon is fine. Anything else means trouble. This distinction particularly applies if you dare to drink outside a controlled indoor environment. I believe that we are talking serious sledgehammer and nut territory here.

Is the 'undesirable way' always so bad? Just because you happen to be a group of young people in the park, maybe playing frisbee or something and *horrors* audibly enjoying yourselves, does that justify the CPO marching over and nicking all your booze? Everywhere in the city? Cos I bet that's what will happen. And from the opposite viewpoint, what about the family with the picnic, is normalising drinking in front of young children always ok? Why are they apparently exempt?

I cannot help suspecting that those who fall foul of DPPO orders will be of certain social, maybe racial groups. There appears to be no checks or balances on the police or CPO use of discretion beyond the 'reasonable excuse' proviso, which none of the NCC documents seem to mention. And you will be faced with the option of a fixed penalty notice or going before those noted liberals the Magistrates Court to argue that, although you were just quietly reading a book in the park with a bottle of Strongbow, the fact that you were bothering nobody is a 'reasonable excuse' not to hand over some of your property to the police. If you don't convince them you get an even bigger fine. Best of luck if you do find yourself in this position.

Like I say, sledgehammer and nut, like pretty much all of the 'Anti-Social Behaviour' agenda. This is especially true of the 'whole city' aspect of the plans. Interestingly, the main justification for the citywide thing is -

"Unless the powers are adopted across the whole city, there is a high likelihood the problems experienced will continue and are likely to continue to be pushed from areas covered by a DPPO into neighbouring areas across the City..."

What do you think neighbouring local authorities think about the possibility of displacement of city drinkers to their areas? Presumably they will be 'consulted'.

It's not good enough is it? I'm open to the idea that DPPOs are potentially a good idea in some local areas, mostly temporarily. as one of the tools to deal with a particular problem. But setting one up across the entire city smacks of a more authoritarian agenda, one where NCC cannot be bothered to deal with difficult problems so picks an easy solution off the shelf. They need to stop doing that.

Community Protection Officers Up to No Good (Allegedly - In Part Anyway)

I saw a report in the Telegraph about Met officers and staff being caught illegally accessing the Police National Computer for their own ends. It reminded me of something similar locally.

There have been two incidents reported locally (here and here) concerning Community Protection Officers being accused of rape. In one case the CPO was found guilty of using the PNC to find out if the woman had reported the attack, although he was found not guilty of the rape itself*. In the other case, it is reported that the CPO is accused of three rapes, two sexual assaults and 'misuse of computer systems'. I personally wonder whether this was again checking up for victims' reports. This second case has yet to be tried.

Notts Police has been in trouble for computer security before so you'd think that everything would be done to minimise risk. I can't for one minute see why CPOs would ever need access to the PNC so surely it would make sense to simply not give it to them?

As I say the second case has yet to go to full trial but if he is also found guilty questions need to be asked, and answered. As the Gunn case demonstrated, crooks who manage to get hold of police info find it easier to stay lucky. With rape cases having such low conviction rates anyway that's the last thing women need.

*Campaigners concerned with the low rate of convictions in rape trials, not to mention the woman concerned herself, might see this result as a bit of a kick in the teeth. Clearly I don't know all the facts etc but you have to wonder how a jury can see the accused man's denial of rape carrying greater credibility than the victim's accusation when they clearly found him dishonest enough to hack the PNC and then lie about it.

Framework's Judicial Review of City's Supporting People Cuts Failed

One from earlier in the year that I missed. Can't really find anything in local media and blogs either except in the NCH Bulletin.

It seems that Framework Housing's application to have NCC's Supporting People cuts Judicially Reviewed was refused back in March, according to an article in 'Inside Housing'.

It's not overly surprising, judicial reviews of governmental policy decisions, both local and national, are somewhat hit and miss but what is interesting is IH's reporting that correspondence between JoCo and DCLG "...indicated that the city’s formula grant allocation for the coming year includes at least £19.8 million for Supporting People..." whereas NCC cut its SP budget by 45% to £12.4m.

That £19.8m figure appears to have come from this letter from Grant Schapps to JoCo sent in January. The thing is that 'Supporting People' no longer has a ring fenced amount provided by central government. It was decided to roll SP into the overall 'Formula Grant' from this year (a decision actually made by the previous Labour administration) meaning that councils can more or less spend it as they see fit. This is probably why the JR action was refused; it was a local decision as to how to allocate formula grant to SP and other services and NCC's decision was not considered to breach the limits of 'rationality'.

I've touched on this before but as JoCo is still going about the place saying that it was the Tory Government that cut SP by 45% not NCC, it perhaps bears repeating. The Tory government axed NCC's overall 'spending power', a new measure which includes contributions to NHS and other services and thus probably disguises the true extent of cuts, by 8.9%. NCC calculates that this is equivalent to a cut to the actual council of 16.5%. Lets make no mistake this was an appalling and unjustified cut and we must continue to challenge it.

However, it was NCC that decided to disproportionately cut Supporting People by 45% rather than apply a proportional cut of 16.5% (or less for that matter), while at the same time protecting funding for Community Protection Officers (waste of space and a remnant of Labour's authority wank) and children's centres (more justifiable). We must all continue to challenge this with equal determination and Collins could do us all a favour and come clean.

What We Told Them

You might have heard that there's a bit of an issue with cuts to NCC's budget coming up. Depending on who you believe, NCC's central government funding has been cut by either 8.9% (government version) or 16.5% (NCC version). The latter is probably nearer the reality because government figures refer to changes in 'spending power' which includes funding from the NHS and other sources.

As the Guardian wrote last week, the story is even less clear when we look at specific services like Supporting People. NCC says it's the government that has cuts Nottingham's budget, the government says the real figure is something like 10%. However, as SP central funding is no longer ring fenced NCC is not obliged to pass on the alleged cut wholesale which it seems to be trying to imply. It is NCC that has decided that SP projects will see the full 45% cut while protecting funding for Community Protection Officers and Childrens Centres.

This decision not to make any cuts to the CPO budget has been sold to us on the basis that we told NCC that we didn't want them to be cut in the answer to their surveys. I was a little sceptical about this because NCC doesn't have a particularly happy history of carrying out consultations fairly. Well, now we can see what they mean because the results of the budget consultations have been published.

So the headline findings of the first survey are summed up in this short extract -


"For each service a mean average has been calculated out of 5. The top 5 services rated most important by respondents are:

1. Tackling crime and anti social behaviour (4.3 out of 5)

2. Refuse collection (4.2 out of 5)

3. Services for elderly and vulnerable people (4.2 out of 5)

4. Child protection (4.1 out of 5)

5. Public transport (4.0 out of 5)"

So yes,  'tackling crime and antisocial behaviour' did get the highest average rating of 4.3/5 which I suppose does support retaining all funding for CPOs theoretically. But 'services for disabled and vulnerable' scored 4.2, a mere 0.1 percentage points less yet Supporting People gets a 45% cut. How does NCC square that?

The fact is that you could probably make a pretty convincing case for protecting just about any council service you care to pick so surely no one service should be immune to seeing cuts passed on. It seems pretty clear to me that the cuts have their own ideological element and NCC has always liked it's men in uniform.