Please contribute now and share to challenge the Legal Aid Agency's refusal to fund cases against Public Space Protection Orders, blocking access to justice for residents wanting to take local councils to court.

The Legal Aid Agency will not grant legal aid to help people challenge potentially unlawful Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs). 

Councils can make PSPOs to ban activities they deem to have a detrimental effect on the lives of others. 

Many have used them to criminalise rough sleeping.

They carry on-the-spot penalties of up to £100 or, if you don’t pay, prosecution and a possible £1,000 bill. 

The Legal Aid Agency will not provide financial assistance to challenge a PSPO even if it unjustifiably affects the poorest in society. This needs to change right now – but we need your help.

The power to create Public Space Protection Orders is overly broad and ripe for abuse and misuse.

However well-meaning, overzealous councils have used them to ban all sorts of innocuous activities including gathering in groups of just two people, lying down in public and swearing.

Worse still, many local authorities have used them to criminalise rough sleeping – wrongly equating homelessness with antisocial behaviour and actively ignoring Home Office guidance.

When Liberty tried to challenge Poole Borough Council’s PSPO for doing just that, the Legal Aid Agency refused to assist. The body insisted the case could be financed by donations from the public instead.

The Agency’s stance makes it virtually impossible for anyone to challenge a potentially unfair PSPO – let alone some of the most vulnerable in society.

It is already notoriously difficult to challenge them because any legal case must be lodged within six weeks of the Order coming into force. The Legal Aid Agency has now compounded this situation.

Having to rely on the generosity of the public to enforce your basic human rights makes a mockery of access to justice and goes against the very spirit of the law. 

And it is simply bizarre that a government agency is refusing to assist people in challenging council actions which contravene Government guidance.

It will become inconceivable for a resident to take a local authority to court for abusing its power unless we take a stand now.

This case is vital – but we need your help to make it happen. Please donate so that those targeted by illegitimate Public Space Protection Orders can have their day in court.

Your donation will go to the Civil Liberties Trust, a registered charity (no. 1024948) that supports the charitable aspects of Liberty’s work.  Liberty is not itself a charity. This leaves us free to pursue all the work necessary to protect and promote civil liberties and human rights, including our political campaigning.