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Havant Borough Council Bye Laws
A bye-law is a law which only affects the area
of a Council. They are issued (made) by that Council only
when it has been granted the power to do so by an Act of
Parliament. The purpose of byelaws is to prevent or reduce
some nuisance or harm to people who live, visit or work in that
area. Basically – they act like other laws, but deal with
local problems rather than national problems. They must not
be inconsistent with national laws, however, nor can they be
“manifestly unreasonable”. They can be enforced by the
Council or by police in some circumstances.
Today, new byelaws are approved by national
government departments. Some departments provide standard
byelaws which Councils can choose to adopt. For example, the
Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs
(DEFRA)
provide model byelaws about coastal problems. Byelaws which
do not broadly follow model examples from government departments
are very rare today.
Havant Borough Council took responsibility for
the duties of urban and rural councils operating in the same area
during the changes to Local Government structure in 1972.
Some of the byelaws listed below refer to those earlier
authorities. However, they remain valid until either
superceded by national law, or withdrawn by Havant Borough Council
even if they are of little relevance any more. The Council
has not prosecuted for improper use of Gramophones for some time,
for example!
You may also note that several of the older
byelaws for our area refer to pre-decimal sums of money.
These sums were raised by the Criminal Law Act 1977 and other
legislation so that now they fit into what is called the “standard
scale” for fines. This makes the maximum fine for breaking
most byelaws £500 rather than one shilling.
Contact : Nick Bennett, Senior Litigation
Solicitor, Havant Borough Council
email: nicholas.bennett@havant.gov.uk
Tel: 02392 446311
Table of Byelaws
All the documents linked below are to
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