Public order tackling legal highs at Latitude Festival will not be extended
Police say they no longer need extra powers to tackle drugs on the festival site
Last updated 10th Jun 2022
A public order which aims to crackdown on legal highs at Latitude Festival will not to be extended because there is no evidence it has been needed.
A PSPO – public space protection order – was introduced in 2016 and renewed in 2019 to tackle problems around legal highs.
The order allows police to tackle a specific problem in a defined area by imposing conditions on use of the area, in this case distributing, possessing, consuming, selling or offering legal highs at Henham Park during the Latitude weekend.
The order expires on July 17 this year, just a handful of days before this year’s festival, but police have agreed that it is no longer needed because there was “little evidence of nitrous oxide use at the festival” and other powers were available.
Since 2016, just four fixed penalty notices were served over the issue. According to official festival figures, around 35,000 people attended last year, no fines were issued in 2021 and fewer than 10 nitrous oxide cannisters were found.
Cllr Mark Jepson, Conservative assistant cabinet member for community safety said: “The current PSPO for Henham Park expires in July this year. Having consulted with police there has been very little use of this legislation for a number of years.
“There is now more appropriate legislation and the police are now quite happy we don’t go for a renewal of this.”
The powers were originally introduced in 2016 after psychoactive substances were linked to the deaths of 144 people in the UK two years prior.
While the public space protection order won’t exist beyond July 17, there are alternative powers police can use if problems arise.
They include dispersal powers or a community protection notice.
We spoke to Guy Jones a senior scientist at a drug checking charity The Loop.
He told us he agrees the public order is no longer needed but still has concerns over peoples safety.
"I would agree that the Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) is no longer needed and whether or not the Psychoactive Substances Act is going to keep people safe from the harms associated with drugs is rather a different question.
"What we've seen in the last five years, six years since the Psychoactive Substances Act was introduced, is a massive increase in the number of drug related deaths year on year to a point where we are now at literally record high numbers of deaths as a result of drugs.
"And it's gonna need a change in approach because clearly what's being done at the moment is not effective."
"So yes, I agree that the PPO is no longer needed, but I think what would be good to see is some policies perhaps required from central government to make sure that people are being kept safe.
The festival couldn’t be held in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but returned in 2021 as part of the Government’s events research programme for opening up of events safely from the Covid-19 pandemic.
It required attendees to prove they had been vaccinated or tested negative for coronavirus.
This year, Lewis Capaldi, Foals and Snow Patrol will headline the July 21-24 weekender.