Jacqueline Boyd often used to take one of her dogs with her when she went into Nottingham town centre. A canine consultant and lecturer in animal science at Nottingham Trent University, Boyd has six cocker spaniels at her home in Newark-on-Trent. When she travelled into the city, she would bring one along to meet a friend, go to the Christmas markets, or even act as a therapy dog for her students during exam season. Now, she doesn’t bother: “I just don’t go near Nottingham city with my dogs because of all the orders.”
The orders she’s referring to are public spaces protection orders (PSPOs), used by local authorities to combat antisocial behaviour. PSPOs can restrict activities that councillors feel have “a detrimental effect” on the area, including alcohol consumption, begging, busking, rough sleeping, metal detecting, swearing – even climbing trees. But across England and Wales, one of the most common subjects of PSPOs is dogs.
Many of these orders target dog poo problems, or ban dogs from specific locations such as children’s play areas. Others require them to be kept on a lead in certain spaces. But some go further. A proposed PSPO in Tower Hamlets, London, could ban off-lead dogs in all public places – including the borough’s largest green space, at 86 hectares (213 acres), Victoria Park. Several councils have brought in rules that restrict the number of dogs a person can walk at once, often to four, which professional dog walkers claim risks making their business unsustainable. Some councils point to a rise in dog attacks – up 21% across England and Wales in a year – as motivation for bringing in restrictions. Breaching a PSPO can result in a £100 fixed-penalty notice, which can increase to £1,000 if unpaid.
Nottingham city councillor Corall Jenkins says they introduced dog control PSPOs in 2016 largely in response to complaints about dog mess. An order on dog fouling applies to all open air public spaces – and she says these types of complaint are now “not as prevalent”. While few dog owners would challenge the rules around dog fouling, there is concern about the other measures – which include a blanket exclusion of dogs from children’s play areas, nature reserves and school land. “The phrase I keep hearing, and I’ve used myself, is that this is a gradual erosion of freedoms or liberties,” says Boyd.
The orders vary so much from place to place, she says, that it’s hard to keep track: “There is no consistency, so you can very easily fall foul of some of these innocently.” When we speak, nearby South Kesteven district council is considering restricting the number of dogs one person can walk at a time, which would affect Boyd when she visits her parents. She feels such proposals lack nuance – walking one large, out-of-control dog could pose a greater risk to the public than five well-behaved pugs.
Boyd also worries that over-restrictive rules could affect dog welfare. “Dogs need physical and mental stimulation,” she says. “If you limit that, you can get problems with frustration-related behaviours.” This could include barking, destructive behaviour, or reactivity towards other dogs or people.
Many attribute the rise in reported dog attacks over the apst few years to inadequate socialisation and training of “pandemic puppies”. Boyd says she has had encounters with dogs whose owners don’t seem to have done basic training such as recall. “I wouldn’t say it’s poor dog behaviour, because often it’s the handler,” she says.
Ed Hayes, head of public affairs at the dog welfare organisation The Kennel Club, points out that owners have a legal requirement to properly exercise their pets. The government’s code of practice for the welfare of dogs states this should include opportunities to “walk, run, explore, play, sniff and investigate”.
Although exercise needs differ by dog, for many this will mean at least some time off-lead – so the dog can run about, chase a ball, or sniff in the bushes, for instance. A dog off-lead simply gets more exercise, says Hayes: “Off-lead, the human companion will walk a mile and the dog will walk five miles because it’s zigzagging back and forth.”
Josie Appleton, 48, from London, is the director of the Manifesto Club, a civil liberties group that campaigns against PSPOs. She says that rather than tackling antisocial dog owners, who probably won’t follow the rules anyway, such blanket orders make life harder for most dog owners who are responsible. “What’s happening is a kind of regulation of dog owners that is not actually to do with the people who are causing a nuisance,” she says.
Data collected by the Manifesto Club shows the number of PSPOs in place across the UK has consistently increased since the powers were first introduced in 2014. “Every year, there are more controls,” says Appleton. Out of 303 councils, at least 160 had one or more PSPO relating to dogs in 2022.
Back in Nottingham, it is a windy day and only the most committed dog walkers are out. According to the Manifesto Club, Nottingham city issued one of the highest number of penalties for dog offences in 2023, but not all owners are fazed by the orders. Dave and Mary Blackbourn have no problem putting their 13-year-old cocker spaniel, Deano, on a lead if needed. Having previously been in a display team for obedience, he is clearly very well trained. The only issue, says Dave, is when less well‑behaved dogs approach. “Deano usually tells them off himself,” he says.
Professional dog walker Ella Sheldon, 22, who is exercising staffordshire bull terrier mix Roxy in Victoria Park in Nottingham, says a lot of her clients’ dogs need to stay on-lead anyway – either because they are reactive to other dogs or they are liable to eat everything. “People are respectful about it,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where it’s been an on-lead area and somebody has had their dog off-lead.”
In the shelter of Nottingham city council’s headquarters, Jenkins says the council’s rules are mostly focused on fouling, and strike a balance between trying to reduce the problem without being too heavy-handed. “It’s not controversial,” she says. “The feedback we are getting is that in some cases it’s working, in some cases they’d like us to do more.”
No one I speak to has issues with the penalties for dog fouling. “Whether you’re a dog owner, dog lover, dog hater, non-dog-owner – no one wants to put their foot into a pile of dog mess,” says Hayes.
But poo is the hardest thing to police. In nearby North East Lincolnshire, councillor Ron Shepherd recently joined enforcement officers at 5am at a notorious dog fouling hotspot. There is a point at which a public footpath meets a farmer’s field, where some early-morning dog walkers have what Shepherd calls a “bizarre fetish” of bagging their dog’s mess, only to tie the bag to a tree branch and leave it. Shepherd had suggested installing a dog poo bin nearby, but the estate owner and local residents opposed it. So he found himself “skulking around the bushes”, waiting to pounce on offenders.
It’s very difficult to catch dog fouling in the act. It requires a dog to do its business, its owner to ignore it, and an enforcement officer to see it. This has led some councils, including Nottingham city and North East Lincolnshire, to introduce PSPOs that require dog walkers to carry the “means to pick up”, such as dog waste bags. In this way, officers can ask anyone with a dog to show they are prepared, regardless of whether their dog actually makes a mess in their presence.
But while the “means to pick up” offence may be easier to enforce, there is a risk of “catching” innocent people – perhaps they took one bag out for their dog to do its business and were nearly home when an officer stopped them – and it certainly wouldn’t catch someone who has left a bag of poo in a tree. Appleton believes this kind of order demonstrates the “blank cheque” nature of PSPOs, which allow councils to come up with sweeping offences that could penalise people who haven’t actually done anything wrong. Previous research by the Manifesto Club has shown that PSPOs are sometimes passed through a single council officer. “Sometimes it’s just that the councillor hates dogs,” she says.
Hayes observes that once one council introduces a new PSPO, others often adopt it. “There are a lot of copy-and-paste jobs going on,” he says. PSPOs can last for up to three years, after which they must be reviewed, but Hayes says it’s rare that restrictions are removed.
Shepherd’s 5am stakeout didn’t catch any culprits. All but one of the dog walkers he and the enforcement officers approached were able to show the means to clean up after their dog; the one who didn’t received a warning. But Shepherd hopes publicising the officers’ early shift on social media might deter people who think they can get away with not picking up poo. “That sometimes gets the message across, that people are out there watching you,” he says.
Back in Nottingham, I start making my way out of Victoria Park when my boot slips in the grass. I have stepped in dog poo.
PSPOs become more controversial when they ban dogs outright from public spaces – or require them to be on-lead across large areas, such as the proposals in Tower Hamlets.
Initially, says Tower Hamlets resident and dog owner Bernadette Moriarty, people thought the proposals had been misreported. “Everyone was like: ‘Don’t be so silly, nobody is going to say dogs on leads at all times in all parks,’” she says. When she found out the suggestion was genuine, she co-founded the East London Dog Community to mount an opposition. In November, the group presented the council with a petition with more than 5,000 signatures.
When we meet in a cafe in Wapping, Moriarty is eager to point out that the Community does not oppose all aspects of the proposed PSPO. They agree with measures addressing dog fouling, those that would require dogs to be put on-lead by direction and the exclusion of dogs from gated spaces such as children’s play areas. But the policy of leads-on across all public spaces is disproportionate, she says. “You are treating every dog and every dog owner as antisocial.” As well as negatively affecting animal welfare and behaviour, she says most dog owners will just go en masse to parks in neighbouring boroughs.
Tower Hamlets council says it started its PSPO consultation “following a spate of dog attack incidents involving out-of-control, dangerous and nuisance dogs and their owners”. But the East London Dog Community argues that the number of dog bites is low and that most incidents occur at home, not in public spaces. “I think it was more a kneejerk reaction to the XL bully,” says Moriarty. XL bullies were banned nationwide in 2024, after a series of high‑profile attacks.
A decision on the PSPO in Tower Hamlets is expected in March; Moriarty is hopeful that the council will walk back some of the more restrictive proposals. If not, she says the East London Dog Community is prepared to bring a legal challenge.
The Kennel Club and the RSPCA say there is a place for PSPOs, but they urge councils to keep animal welfare in mind when considering new rules. Hayes says it is common sense to keep dogs out of play areas, bowling greens or nature reserves, and to keep them on leads near roads or in car parks. But most dogs, says Lee Gingell, public affairs manager at the RSPCA, “like to run around. They like to chase balls. They like to exercise.”
Hayes warns against the creation of specific “dog parks”, popular in some US cities. While these can be great as an additional space, for example when training dogs’ recall, he says that crowding dogs in a small, enclosed space can make it unusable for everyone else, and the concentration of dog pee can generate “considerable smell issues” for local residents.
Ultimately, he says, limiting dogs to small areas risks negating the physical and mental health benefits of walking a dog in the first place. Instead of walking with their dog, people could end up standing or sitting around, staring at their phones while their dogs run around. “I think it would be a huge step backwards,” he says.
Boyd agrees: “It starts to spin out to lots of other things, such as human health, wellbeing, the social lubrication effect of dogs.”
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
