Agenda and minutes

Venue: Havering Town Hall, Main Road, Romford

Contact: Richard Cursons 01708 432430  Email: richard.cursons@oneSource.co.uk

Note: Special Meeting 

Items
No. Item

34.

CALL-IN OF CABINET DECISION OF ATTESTATION OF PARKS PROTECTION OFFICERS pdf icon PDF 84 KB

Report attached.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Councillors Ray Morgon and Keith Darvill addressed the Board and gave the reasons for the call-in of the Cabinet decision.

 

Councillor Morgon commented that the Cabinet report had not given enough detail and that he wanted re-assurances regarding the practical details of the proposals.

 

Councillor Darvill re-iterated the points raised by Councillor Morgon.

 

The Council’s Head of Cultural and Leisure Services advised that currently the Parks Protection Service was operating with no specific powers at their disposal. The service operated under delegated authority from the Council and this had been the case since the service was established in 2010.

 

At present the service used “any person” powers to arrest anyone who was in the act of committing an indictable offence, or anyone whom the officers had reasonable grounds for suspecting to be committing an indictable offence.

 

It was a requirement for the service to enforce the byelaws in parks and the majority of offences that occurred were breaches of the byelaws however, the use of the “any person” method of arrest could not be used for breaches of byelaws.

 

At present there was no legal requirement for a member of the public who had committed a byelaw offence to give the Parks Protection Service their name and address which was required to be able to deal effectively with many offences.

 

The introduction of attestation powers would enable officers to arrest individuals for failure to supply a name and address or where the name provided was in doubt.

 

In response to a question regarding how many times the use of the new powers would be of benefit to the service, officers advised that it was difficult to assess the exact numbers of incidents that would occur in the future where having attestation powers would result in incidents being dealt with more effectively. However, Cabinet had agreed to receive a progress report once the attestation powers had been in place for a 12 month period.

 

Officers confirmed that the new powers would be seen more as a deterrent than something that was used on a regular basis.

 

It was also noted that although crimes figures generally in the borough reducing that there had been an increase in more violent crimes.

 

At present drugs offences were not covered by byelaws and officers could not obtain details of offenders without attestation powers which sometimes left officers in exposed circumstances often having to “bluff” their way through situations.

 

Under the attestation powers offenders could be de-arrested once the information given to officers had been gathered.

 

In response to a question regarding the jurisdiction of the attestation powers officers confirmed that the powers would only be applicable within the confines of the park grounds and officers could not arrest outside the park gates.

 

Officers advised that some other London borough’s parks were managed by the Metropolitan Police such as City of London and the Royal Parks and other boroughs had introduced attestation powers to existing Parks Protection Services.

 

Members were advised that at present the police  ...  view the full minutes text for item 34.