E-Scooter Ban on Southend High Street

April 28, 2023

This week Southend's Town Centre Team and Special Constables initiated "Operation Sierra". The operation was set up to stop the use of e-scooters and bicycles on Southend High Street which is for pedestrians only. Southend Council have worked to prevent anti-social behaviour with a Public Spaces Protection Order now put in place.

Councils can use PSPOs to prohibit specified activities, and/or require certain things to be done by people engaged in particular activities, within a defined public area. PSPOs differ from other tools introduced under the Act as they are council-led, and rather than targeting specific individuals or properties, they focus on the identified problem behaviour in a specific location. The legislation provides for restrictions to be placed on behaviour that apply to everyone in that locality (with the possible use of exemptions). Breach of a PSPO without a reasonable excuse is an offence.

PSPOs are one of the tools available under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. These are wide-ranging and flexible powers for local authorities, which recognise that councils are often best placed to identify the broad and cumulative impact that ASB can have. The Act gives councils the authority to draft and implement PSPOs in response to the particular issues affecting their communities, provided certain criteria and legal tests are met.

Based on provisional data from the Office of National Statistics, in the year ending June 2022:

• There were 1,349 collisions involving e-scooters, compared to 978 in the year ending June 2021.
• Of all collisions involving e-scooters, 346 included only one e-scooter with no other vehicles involved in the collision (single vehicle collision), compared to 200 in the year ending June 2021.
• There were 1,437 casualties in collisions involving e-scooters, compared to 1,033 in the year ending June 2021.
• Of all casualties in collisions involving e-scooters, 1,095 were e-scooter users, compared to 811 in the year ending June 2021.
• There were 12 killed in collisions involving e-scooters (11 of whom were e-scooter riders) compared to 4 in the year ending June 2021.
• Our best estimate, after adjusting for changes in reporting by police, is that there were 429 seriously injured and 996 slightly injured casualties in collisions involving e-scooters, compared to 288 and 741 respectively in the year ending June 2021.