Can the police charge a football club for match day policing on public land immediately outside a stadium, where that land is largely under the control of the club? No, the Court of Appeal re-affirmed in Ipswich Town Football Club v Chief Constable of Suffolk [2017] EWCA Civ 1484.
In Sheffield City Council v Fairhall [2017] EWHC 2121 (QB), the Court has been asked to consider the extent to which the decision in DPP v Jones [1999] UKHL 5; [1999] 2 AC 240 can be relied upon as a right to conduct peaceful but disruptive protest on the highway.
There has been a long battle in Sheffield to prevent the local authority’s tree-felling programme. In an effort to discharge its obligation under s.41 of the Highways Act 1980 more efficiently, Sheffield City Council contracted out its maintenance contract to Amey Hallam Highways Ltd. In operating the contract, Amey identified a large number of trees, many of them healthy, that it wished to cut down. Campaigners believed that the contract into which Sheffield City Council entered was unlawful as it put, the Defendant submitted, profiteering (by Amey) and cost-cutting (by the Council) ahead of its environmental obligations.
In Van Ek & Jukes v Director of Public Prosecutions (16th January 2013) the Divisional Court dismissed the appeal of two protestors who were convicted of breaching conditions imposed on the route of a procession under s.12 of the Public Order Act 1986 (the POA).
Van Ek and Jukes were participating in a march against education cuts in central London. A specific route had been determined, and the Metropolitan Police had imposed a condition on the procession that it follow this specific route. The route did not take the protestors into Trafalgar Square, where an anti-capitalist protest camp had been set up, and was still present at the time of the march. A police cordon had been placed across the junction between a street and Trafalgar Square to prevent marchers entering the Square.
Can pre-emptive detention, purely to prevent a person committing an offence or a breach of the peace, where they have not yet committed an offence, be lawful under Article 5 of the ECHR? In R (Hicks) v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2014] EWCA Civ 3 the Court of Appeal has said, “yes”: it may be lawful under Article 5(1)(c), provided that at the time of the arrest there is an intention to take the arrested person before the courts. It may also be lawful under 5(1)(b) in certain circumstances, not closely defined in the judgment.
In Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co (Europe) Ltd & Ors v Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime [2013] EWHC 2734 (Comm) the Court decided that damage to a warehouse and the goods within it caused during the 2011 riots fell to be compensated under the Riot Damages Act 1886, but that consequential losses of profit and rent were not recoverable.