“In 2002/03 Leeds had more identified rough sleepers than anywhere else outside of London, and was under significant pressure from central government to reduce these figures.”

So said Sarah Johnsen and Suzanne Fitzpatrick at page 15 of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report “The impact of enforcement on street users in England.” They went on to say:

“Leeds set a target of maintaining rough sleeper figures below 10, was an anti-begging ‘trailblazer’ and given the target of reducing begging by 60% by March 2005 by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. No formal targets for street drinking were set, but the council was “encouraged to address it”, and Leeds city centre became a DPPO.”

In December 2006, the Yorkshire Evening Post reported that there was “No room on the streets for the city’s homeless.” The report stated, “Rough sleepers moved out of Leeds city centre when new policies were introduced making it an offence.” The “offence” referred to was drinking or being in possession of alcohol, which the police and council were claiming had been an offence in the city centre since a DPPO was established there in November 2004. In fact, a DPPO was not an alcohol ban. It merely allowed the police to confiscate and fine anyone who was drinking and disorderly. But it suited the police and the council to treat it as an alcohol ban.

As it became more difficult to count street drinkers, the policy appeared on the surface to be working. In 2007 the Yorkshire Evening Post published an article entitled, “Official: There’s only ONE rough sleeper in Leeds.” Everyone knew it wan’t true, but it looked good. The article said, “Eyebrows have been raised after government statistics revealed there is only one rough sleeper in Leeds.”

In 2010, the Yorkshire Evening Post published another article on rough sleepers entitled, “Leeds homeless figures disputed” The article stated, “Hundreds of people are homeless and destitute in Leeds… despite an official figure of just SIX people sleeping rough in the city.”

The way that Leeds set about hiding its rough sleepers was by having the police direct them to areas where they couldn’t be counted. The people they directed were the people found in possession of alcohol, which the police treated as a crime. The official “counters” of rough sleepers didn’t have to enter areas that were deemed to be dangerous, and so the police directed rough sleepers into dangerous areas. In 2007 and 2008, the police were directing rough sleepers to Beckett Street cemetery and to the riverside at Kirkstall.

Some of the rough sleepers displaced from the city centre were frequenting Hanover Square and Woodhouse Square in Little Woodhouse. Neighbouring residents began to exert pressure on the council to extend the city centre DPPO to cover Little Woodhouse.

On the 4th April 2006, Penny Ewens (one of the three Lib Dem councillors for Hyde Park and Woodhouse) told the Little Woodhouse Community Association that the council planned to establish a DPPO (Designated Public Places Order) in Hyde Park and Woodhouse. She said its purpose was to ban street drinkers from the area between the city centre and Headingley (a DPPO had been established in Headingley in March 2006). Councillor Ewens said that it would be necessary to establish a “drinking den” (to use her own words) for drinkers who would be displaced from the streets as a result of the new DPPO. She didn’t say where it was proposed to locate the drinking den (see the highlighted text at the top of page 3 of the Forum minutes). Then, in a report presented to a meeting of the council’s Inner North West Area Committee on the 21st September 2006, the council’s area management team said (see Appendix 1 on page 26):

“Once the proposed DPPO is in place, the Moor may well attract street drinkers who have been displaced. The view of the Neighbourhood Policing Team is that the Moor is large enough for street drinkers to not cause a nuisance and regular patrols to the area would keep an eye on the situation”.

At the same meeting, Inspector Richard Coldwell said he strongly supported the council’s plan to establish a drinking den on the Moor, and described a similar scheme in Brockwell Park in Lambeth where he said street alcoholics are encouraged to keep to a particular area of the park, screened from the rest of the park by bushes which they use as a toilet, and that having them in one place makes it easier for the police and social workers to keep an eye on them – a “multi-agency success story”, he said. Despite Inspector Coldwell’s enthusiasm, on this occasion the council’s North West Inner Area committee voted against the proposal.

At North West Inner Area Committee meeting on the 8th February 2007, a report was presented which stated that the key message from the “Street Drinking Meeting” of the 24th November 2006 was (see paragraph 2.8 on page 3):

“The group discussed the proposal for a DPPO to cover much of Hyde Park and Woodhouse to alleviate the problem of street drinkers congregating in residential areas. Leeds Simon Community has carried out consultation with some of the street drinkers in the area to assess the impact of a DPPO. The feeling among the client group is that they would like to have an area where they could congregate safely, and the Lambeth model of a tolerance zone in a park or other location would be welcomed.”

The proposal was brought up again at a special meeting of the Inner North West Inner Area Committee on the 19th April 2007. Councillors were told that street drinkers were causing considerable problems in Little London and Little Woodhouse. As a result, they asked officers to progress a DPPO to tackle these issues and voted £5,000 to support its implementation. The report to councillors stated, ” The project will work with street drinkers to make them aware of the community needs in the area, helping drinkers understand what the impact of their activity is and to try and divert them away to other areas where street drinking will not effect the community adversely.” (see paragraph 5.3.1 on page 33 of the report) The officer with responsibility for creating DPPOs told everyone that it wouldn’t be possible to include Woodhouse Moor in the DPPO as the council held an all year drinks licence for the park which meant the park was “licensed premises” and licensed premises couldn’t be covered by a DPPO. At paragraph 2.2 of his DPPO Update Report submitted to the Inner North West Area Committee on the 28th June 2007, he stated with regard to DPPOs, “Nor does it apply to any premises or areas covered by a licence allowing the consumption of alcohol”. He was unaware, apparently, that earlier that year (on the 6th April 2007), there had been a change in the law which made it possible to have DPPOs covering licensed premises. These DPPOs simply cease to function during events at which alcohol is sold or supplied, and for 30 minutes afterwards. So everyone had been misinformed. We wrote to the police and the council in May 2007 setting out the true position:

“Section 14 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, which defines licensed premises, has now been amended by section 26 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. The effect of this is to enable public places which also happen to be licensed premises to have DPPOs applied to them. There is therefore no longer any legal impediment to Woodhouse Moor being included in the proposed DPPO.

Section 12 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 states that an officer “may” take action against a person he believes has been consuming alcohol, is consuming alcohol, or is about to consume alcohol. It does not say that the officer “must” or “will” take action. The officer clearly has discretion to use his powers only where he believes there to be a risk of public disorder. This means that a couple on a rug on the Moor enjoying a glass of wine would not warrant the attention of a police officer but that a group or individuals creating or likely to create disorder would.”

After we’d made it clear that Woodhouse Moor could be covered by a DPPO, the officer responsible for DPPOs wrongly claimed that a DPPO covering Woodhouse Moor would prevent ordinary people from having a drink on the Moor and said that the police had said that if the proposed DPPO covered the Moor, they would have to act against anyone found drinking there. But according to Home Office guidance, it’s not drinking that’s the offence, it’s continuing to drink after being asked to stop by a police officer. It appeared to us that the council and the police were using scare tactics to frighten people into allowing them to exclude Woodhouse Moor from the DPPO. The council officer also said that the police did not have the resources to police a DPPO covering Woodhouse Moor; but of course, they could say this about anywhere.

It was clear that Leeds City Council and the police wanted street drinkers off the streets and onto Woodhouse Moor. With street drinkers out of sight on the Moor, they would be left out of official counts of rough sleepers and the council and the police would be spared the nationwide embarrassment their presence on the streets was causing city bosses.

The Headingley Lib Dem councillors began a campaign of disinformation telling people that a DPPO was an alcohol ban and that local residents wanted to ban alcohol on Woodhouse Moor. Headlines appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post describing the DPPO as an alcohol ban. Earlier articles had already described DPPOs as alcohol bans. Long articles appeared in the student newspapers of both Leeds University and Leeds Metropolitan University telling students that local residents were wanting to ban alcohol on the Moor as part of a ploy to get students off the park. Headingley Lib Dem Councillor James Monaghan gave an interview to the Leeds Metropolitan University student newspaper in which he claimed precisely that. A problem for us was that the local newspaper kept associating the issue of the DPPO with the issue of the existing anti-social behaviour on the Moor as if our attempt to ensure that the DPPO covered the Moor was simply an attempt to stop anti social behaviour on the Moor. We weren’t under any illusions. We knew that the police would never intervene to stop anti-social behaviour on the Moor if a DPPO was in place there. Our main aim was to ensure that the Moor wasn’t excluded from the DPPO being proposed for Little Woodhouse and Little London, because if the Moor was excluded, the police would be able to direct street drinkers onto the Moor, something they’d already made clear that they wanted.

A bar owner called Rich Kean set up Facebook site called “Don’t let them ban alcohol in Hyde Park.” It had over 1,500 members. Inspection of the list of members showed that many of the members gave “Leeds, USA” as their address and that the same faces and names kept recurring. Rich Kean ran the Bourbon bar on Cookridge Street. He supplied cheap alcohol to people who produced an NUS card and had a daily “two for the price of one” offer until 8pm. Mr Kean claimed that his bar was the Leeds terminus of the Otley Run (a pub crawl popular with students). One of the Facebook site’s organisers was Leeds University student union rep Sara Gill.

At this time, an “anything goes” culture was in full swing on Woodhouse Moor. There were frequent illegal “raves” at night which went on into the early hours of the morning. The organisers used to turn up with vans filled with alcohol and set up petrol generators to power the sound systems. Bar owners used these events to advertise their bars. It’s easy to see how such people would be worried by the prospect of a “booze ban” on the Moor.

During the summer of 2008, the council pressed ahead with plans for a DPPO that would cover Hanover Square and Woodhouse Square but exclude Woodhouse Moor. This was despite 75% of respondents during a consultation exercise on the issue that took place in June having said that they didn’t want this DPPO if the Moor was to be excluded from it.

By October 2008, the police had been opposing a DPPO on Woodhouse Moor for two years. They gave several reasons for their opposition, one of which was that that they didn’t have sufficient resources to police a DPPO on the Moor. Another was that the Moor was big enough to absorb the problem of street drinkers. Then suddenly in October 2008, they changed tack, and said that they would support a DPPO on the Moor.

On Monday the 3rd November 2008, the council’s Licensing Committee approved a DPPO covering Hanover Square and Woodhouse Square. At the meeting, the officer with responsibility for DPPOs said that the council would carry out a consultation exercise on whether or not people wanted the Moor to be covered by a DPPO.

A consultation exercise took place and ended on the 5th December with the majority of respondents saying they wanted a DPPO to cover the Moor. On the 3rd February 2009, the council’s Licensing Committee met and voted to establish a DPPO on Woodhouse Moor (see section 39 of the minutes of the meeting).