Street Cruising Classic Case for Injunction

For some years the West Midlands, and particularly the City of Birmingham, has been plagued with a form of anti-social behaviour known as street cruising or car cruising.

On 3 October 2016 Judge Worster granted an injunction against persons unknown pursuant to s222 of the Local Government Act 1972 prohibiting street cruising throughout the local authority area.  On 24 May 2019 Judge McKenna refused an application by the appellant to discharge the injunction.

The question for the Court of Appeal (the Master of the Rolls, Bean and Holroyde LJJ) was whether the injunction was properly granted given what was said to be the alternative remedy available to the Council of itself making a public spaces protection order (PSPO)  under Part 4 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: Harun Mansoor Sharif v Birmingham City Council [2020] EWCA Civ 1488.

Powerful evidence was provided that street cruising was a widespread problem and that the Council’s attempts to deal with it by means short of an injunction had been unsuccessful.

Street cruising is not a statutory term.  It was described in the judge’s order as a congregation of the drivers of 2 or more motor vehicles (including motor cycles) on the public highway or at any place to which the public have access within the Claimant’s local government area (known as the City of Birmingham) … at which any persons, whether or not a driver or rider, performs any activities of an  anti-social nature thereafter set out, among other things, danger to other road users (including pedestrians), driving or riding at excessive speed or otherwise driving dangerously, driving or riding in convoy, racing against other motor vehicles, performing stunts in or on motor vehicles.

On 27 September 2018 the Council served a notice of application to commit for contempt of court on Mr Sharif, the application alleging that on 16 September 2018 he had breached the terms of the injunction, causing danger and/or nuisance to other road users by racing his black Audi A5 motor car registration RF63 HBJ against another vehicle dangerously and at an excessive speed.

Mr Sharif applied to have the injunction discharged on the basis that it was plainly wrong to have granted it relying on the decision in Birmingham City Council v Shafi [2009] 1 WLR 1961 where the Court of Appeal concluded that where a local authority sought an injunction on terms that were identical or almost identical to the terms that could have been sought on an application for an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), the court would not as a matter of discretion grant one save in exceptional circumstances.

It was submitted that the sanctions under the Contempt of Court Act 1981 were far more onerous than the sanctions provided for in respect of breaches of PSPOs.

The judge dismissed the application to discharge the injunction.  Reliance on Shafi  was misplaced.  PSPOs were not a specific statutory remedy designed or introduced by Parliament to tackle the specific problem of car cruising.

Furthermore, Shafi had not been followed in other cases.  It was expressly distinguished and held to be irrelevant by the Court of Appeal in Swindon Borough Council v Redpath [2009] EWCA 943 where the Court held that there was no reason why a local authority should not use the ASBI regime instead of the ASBO regime and in respect of which a civil standard of proof would be applied.  There was no doctrine requiring one statutory remedy to be used in preference to another.

Arguing that the judge’s reasoning was deficient in various respects, on appeal counsel added the further point that s130 of the Highways Act 1980 was inapplicable as it was concerned with the protection of the legal rights of the public at large to use the public highway and with legal rights of access, not with the safety of the condition of the public highway.

Additionally, he submitted that another course the Council could have adopted would have been to prosecute the appellant for the appropriate motoring offence and then apply for a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO).

Dismissing the appeal for extensive reasons set out in the judgment, Bean LJ (with whom the rest of the Court agreed), added that the idea of a CBO was as unrealistic as the suggestion of a PSPO.  The purpose of an injunction was to prevent future nuisances, not to impose penalties for past ones.

Judge Worster and Judge McKenna had been well entitled to conclude, in the words of Bingham LJ in Bovis, that car cruising in the Birmingham area would continue unless and until effectively restrained by the law and that nothing short of an injunction would be effective to restrain them.  This was a classic case for the grant of an injunction.

The citizens of the West Midlands who day in and day out have to put up with this serious antisocial behaviour, may be forgiven for thinking that this was an impudent appeal, but it is to be hoped that the Court of  Appeal’s judgment signals the end of the road for street cruising.