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Public Order Act 2023

Contents

Overview of the Act

  1. The purpose of this Act is to strengthen police powers to tackle dangerous and highly disruptive tactics employed by a minority of protesters. This includes provisions to protect major transport projects and key national infrastructure from being targeted by protesters, causing significant delays to the travelling public, preventing the distribution of critical goods such as fuel, and causing costly delays in construction.
  2. The Act is in three Parts.
  3. Part 1 creates a number of new offences relating to locking-on, tunnelling, obstructing major transport works and interfering with the use or operation of key national infrastructure. This Part also confers preventative powers for the police to search for and seize articles related to protest-related offences. It equalises the rank of senior officer to whom the exercise of certain powers under the Public Order Act 1986 may be delegated, removing differences between London and the rest of the country. It extends to the British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence police, where appropriate, existing public order powers already available to other police forces. It makes provision concerning the granting of injunctions in proceedings brought by the Secretary of State in relation to protest activity. It also makes it an offence for a person within a designated area (safe access zone) to interfere with a person’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate the provision of abortion services within that safe access zone. Finally, it introduces a a safeguard for journalists by specifying that the police cannot use their powers for the sole purpose of preventing a person from observing or reporting on a protest or observing or reporting on the exercise of police powers in relations to protests.
  4. Part 2 provides for a new preventative court order, the Serious Disruption Prevention Order, to disrupt the activities of repeat offenders. 
  5. Part 3 contains general provisions in relation to extent and commencement and includes a definition of serious disruption.

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