Councils in England and Wales are using sweeping criminal powers to police everything from noisy animatronic dinosaurs to untidy gardens, while also applying them to serious offences that belong in court, a new report claims.
The Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life found councils issued 4,868 Community Protection Notices (CPNs) and 20,108 Community Protection Warnings (CPWs) between November 2024 and October 2025.
Breaching a notice is a criminal offence, and around a quarter are punished with an on-the-spot fine. That fine is due to rise from £100 to £500 on 26 October under the Crime and Policing Bill.
Use of the powers is concentrated in a handful of areas. Durham issued the most orders, at 2,968, followed by Medway, Bradford, Hackney and Rotherham, while 57 councils issued no CPNs at all and 168 issued five or fewer.
Among the cases uncovered, Herefordshire ordered a dinosaur park to turn down its ‘screeches and hornlike sounds’, Havant told a resident to silence a garden fountain at night, and North Devon forbade one household from ‘staring, pointing or making gestures’.
Teignbridge, meanwhile, issued orders for violence, stalking and domestic abuse.
Josie Appleton, the campaign's director, said: ‘The Community Protection Notice is a blank cheque. The bar for issuing an order is so low, and the checks so few, that a single council officer can act as legislator, judge and jury.’
