Town hall bosses hand out more than 100 Asbos a week for ‘offences’

A town hall threatened an 81-year-old former model with legal action after she was given an order banning her from wearing a bikini in her garden.

Kathleen ‘Kay’ Crane, of Stockport, Greater Manchester, was told to not wear the bikini in view of the children from a neighbouring nursery, or play music unreasonably loud, or watch or shout at the children.

The order issued last November followed a dispute between Miss Crane, and her partner, 83-year-old former television producer Dennis Woolf, and the nursery close to their semi-detached house. The couple had opposed the construction of an extension to the nursery.

Miss Crane said: ‘I was wearing my bikini in the garden during a hot spell last summer. I was hardly parading in front of the children – the nursery overlooks our house and its garden extends around the back of ours.

‘I was also puzzled to be ordered to stop playing music. I was playing the radio in the garden, but it was talkSPORT.’

She added: ‘I did not shout at the children. What is the point of shouting at four-year-olds, telling them they shouldn’t be here, which is what the council says I did?’

At one point, she said, an official told her the council was her friend. ‘I feel I am being persecuted,’ Miss Crane said.

In April, following several months of dispute over the order, Stockport Council lawyers wrote to Miss Crane to say that ‘we have been instructed to issue committal proceedings in the event you continue to breach the undertaking’.

Committal proceedings involve charges of contempt of court and anyone found to be in contempt can be sent to prison for two months.

A Stockport Council spokesman said: ‘This particular case has caused a great deal of alarm and distress to the very young children at the nursery in question.

‘We have tried to work with Ms Crane as much as possible, and whilst wearing a bikini is not a breach of the undertaking agreed in court, staring at the children, shouting at the children and watching the children playing whilst wearing a bikini in full view are some of the repeated behaviours that have caused concern and are classed as a breach of the undertaking.’

It was just one of more than 20,000 new-style ‘Asbos’ which have been handed out in recent years to homeowners accused of minor ‘anti-social’ activities such as keeping chickens or feeding birds.

On 12 occasions, the orders have been used to instruct residents to trim overgrown gardens.

Three families were told to stop keeping chickens, and North Warwickshire council ordered a householder to improve a dilapidated shed.

Introduced in 2014, the community protection notices are reportedly being used at a rate of more than 100 a week.

Unlike Asbos, which were imposed by magistrates, they are the responsibility of council-appointed officials.

In the first year of their use, councils made 3,943 orders. But Freedom of Information requests show that in the year to last October, the annual total had risen to 6,234.

The Manifesto Club, the public spaces campaign group which analysed the figures, said notices were often a spin-off from neighbour disputes.

Spokesman Josie Appleton said it was wrong that they could be issued at the whim of an official, without legal process.

She added: ‘This is a cowboy approach to criminal justice that brings the law and local authorities into disrepute. These powers need to be urgently reviewed… to avoid further injustice and innocent people being penalised.’

Defying the orders can bring a penalty of £100, or £2,500 if a case goes to court, and potentially even prison.