Doncaster business owner welcomes new city centre PSPO as officials grilled over enforcement

A Doncaster businesswoman has welcomed the extension of a public spaces protection order (PSPO) in the city centre, saying the impact has been visible.

The City of Doncaster Council is set to extend its powers under the city centre PSPO, which allows staff to issue fines for various forms of anti-social behaviour (ASB), next week.

Shayne Chen, owner of Toppings Chinese on St Sepulchre Gate, said: “I think it does a good job. The impact isn’t great, but you can see it.”

Mrs Chen said most of the ASB in the city centre appears to come from repeat offenders, some of which are experiencing homelessness or rough sleeping.

“I realise there’s a lot of homelessness. There are some differences now… I see the difference, but the amount of homeless people coming into the city centre, I don’t know how [council staff] deal with that,” she said.

Her comments come after a meeting of the council’s Communities and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Panel, where councillors grilled officials on how successful enforcement of the current PSPO had been.

Councillor Rachel Reed asked how many fixed penalty notices (FPNs) – or fines – had been issued by the council for PSPO breaches in the last three years.

Victoria Shackleton, city centre locality manager, said they had issued 400 FPNs in response to more than 2,000 recorded breaches.

However, she encouraged the councillors in attendance not to judge the success of the PSPO on that ratio, adding much of the ASB in the city centre was “from the same people”, many of whom were vulnerable or homeless.

Ms Shackleton had secured two separate injunctions against offenders in the past year, banning them from the city centre for a fixed period.

She said: “We worked with the police to support a rough sleeper upon their release from custody.”

Following poor engagement with support services and increasingly poor behaviour, including “threats against vulnerable people”, the council sought an injunction against them.

“That person is now banned from the city centre for 12 months,” Ms Shackleton explained.

Mayor Ros Jones and her cabinet are set to renew the PSPO, with extended powers, at a meeting on August 12, 2026.

The new PSPO carries forward a number of prohibitions, such as begging, loitering, drinking alcohol in public, and taking drugs.

In the likely event the PSPO is approved by cabinet, it will introduce an additional ban on using “amplified equipment” without being previously permitted by the council to do so.

The PSPO will continue to provide enforcement teams with the power to effectively hand out shorter 24 hour city centre bans through dispersal orders.