The Issue - Should busking regulations be part of the city’s new protection orders?

Councillor Dee Sinclair, board member for crime, community safety and licensing

Oxford City Council encourages busking in the city centre. It adds a great deal to the vibrant and exciting city centre experience that we all know and love.

For the past decade, the city council has had a code of practice that buskers are asked to agree to observe when they obtain a busking permit from the council.

The code includes: pNot busking for more than 60 minutes in one place pNot obstructing the highway pUsing amplification responsibly and maintaining a reasonable volume.

The aim of the code has always been to create a level playing field for all buskers and to stop any nuisance to everyone else who uses the city centre – traders, local residents and visitors.

We currently have no legal power to enforce this code of practice and have received complaints from traders, in particular, about buskers playing loudly and for long periods of time outside their shops, which is not fair to them.

The Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) has been proposed in order to provide a legal power to take action against busking that leads to complaints from the public. In all cases, buskers will be asked to conform to the code before any enforcement measures are used.

The PSPO will allow the police or designated council officers to issue a £100 fine or, in the most extreme of cases, to take the person to court, which could result in a maximum fine of £1,000.

But the order will also remove the current requirement to obtain a permit before busking.

After the PSPO has been introduced, people wishing to busk will be able to do so without contacting us in any way. All they will need to do is adhere to the existing code of practice.

The measures proposed will therefore have no impact on the vast majority of buskers and will in fact make it easier for musicians to busk in Oxford city centre.

We think the measures will help to improve the liveliness of the city centre.

NO

Oxford City councillor David Thomas 

There already exist sufficient powers at the council’s disposal – such as Community Protection Notices (CPNs) – to deal with a busker when they behave in a genuinely anti-social manner.

What then is the council’s reason for inventing the crime of “non-compliant busking” under the umbrella of a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) and giving itself the powers to make on-the-spot fines?

The answer I’m afraid is one of convenience.

The beauty of a PSPO from the council’s point of view is that it does not have to use the courts to stop an activity, it can simply issue an on-the-spot fine and leave it to the individual involved to challenge the council through the courts if they have the time and resources to pursue the matter.

“So what?” you might ask.

It is only when you appreciate the totally arbitrary and subjective nature of so-called anti-social activities that can be classified as criminal under a PSPO – until last week rough sleeping and pigeon feeding had been deemed criminally anti-social but thankfully struck off after a change of mind by Labour following intense pressure from campaigners – the low level of evidence needed to prosecute, and the potential for intimidation in the way a PSPO is used that it becomes clear just how worrying PSPOs really are.

The council could be forgiven for easing the administration of protecting the public from anti-social behaviour if buskers were in fact behaving anti-socially.

But this is not the case. Those individuals who busk anti-socially – repetitively, persistently, etc – are not even real buskers.

And is playing in one spot for more than one hour really so anti-social as to be something we want to classify as a criminal activity, like stealing or mugging?

York has just introduced a new code of conduct for busking that advocates consultation and co-operation between businesses and buskers so both can go about earning a living from the city centre without recourse to the draconian powers of a PSPO.

Oxford should do the same and drop the idea of criminalising non-compliant busking.