Cabinet agreed the dog and PSPO review as proposed on 16 September. Six dog rules in Bleadon and Winford go; Weston's beach ban waits on one councillor.

Update, 28 September 2026: what Cabinet decided. The minutes of the 16 September meeting are now published. Cabinet agreed to retain, revoke or defer each order “as set out in Appendix 1 to the report”, which is the list below. It also handed the deferred orders to the Cabinet Member for Sustainable Places to decide (Cabinet minutes, 16 September 2026).

In practice that means:

  • the six dog rules in Bleadon and in Winford and Felton are revoked
  • the Weston beach dog ban and the other 17 deferred orders now sit with one cabinet member, Councillor Mark Canniford
  • the other orders are renewed, with the rewording set out below

Two further points are in the minutes. Councillor Canniford told the meeting that work is under way on a licensing scheme for professional dog walkers. And councillors asked for enforcement results to be monitored and made public.

The cabinet member has not yet decided the deferred orders. The council’s decisions register showed nothing for September when we checked on 28 September. We will report the outcome, including the beach, when it is published.

Our report of 12 September

Every rule North Somerset Council enforces in its parks, car parks, town centres and public toilets expires in October. Cabinet decides on Wednesday what happens to them, and the report in front of it asks councillors to renew most, scrap six and leave 18 undecided.

The 18 include the ban on dogs on Weston-super-Mare beach (Public Space Protection Orders 2026, report to Cabinet, 16 September 2026).

What is being decided

The rules are Public Space Protection Orders, brought in across North Somerset in 2017 under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. They cover dog fouling, dogs on leads, littering, public drinking, smoking in children’s play areas, fires and barbecues, and behaviour in council buildings and car parks. Breaking one can bring a fixed penalty notice.

They have to be reviewed periodically. The report sets out what happens if Cabinet does not act: the orders “lapse (October 2026)”.

Cabinet is asked to do two things. Retain, revoke or defer each order as set out in the report’s appendix, and hand the deferred ones to the cabinet member to decide later.

All six are dog rules, and all six are in two parishes.

Parish Location Rule
Bleadon The Parish Allotment Site All dogs on leads
Bleadon The Village Cross Area All dogs on leads
Bleadon Coronation Hall All dogs on leads
Bleadon Mulberry Lane All dogs on leads
Winford and Felton Raglan Field No dogs allowed
Winford and Felton Vee Lane Playing Field No dogs allowed

The 18 left undecided

These would not be settled on Wednesday. The cabinet member would rule on them later.

Four are in Weston-super-Mare: the dog ban on the beach, the seafront restriction on drones and hang gliding or paragliding, the ban on skateboarding, scootering and rollerblading in Princess Royal Square, and the anti-social behaviour rule at the museum.

Seven are in Pill and Easton-in-Gordano, covering the Rudgleigh Inn, Court Hay Football Field, Victoria Park, Lodway Cricket Club, Brookside Playing Field, Hardwick Road Playing Field and the parish pitch on Macrae Road. Only The Orchard in that parish is recommended for renewal.

The rest are three in St Georges (the community centre, The Copse and the village play area), two in Long Ashton (Ashton Court deer parks and Birdwell Recreation Ground), the Coleridge Vale Playing Field in Clevedon, and the no-swimming rule at Abbots Pool in Abbots Leigh.

The report does not say what happens to a deferred order between now and that decision.

The changes that would apply everywhere

The other 47 named-location rules would be renewed, along with the district-wide orders. Several would be reworded:

  • E-scooters and e-bikes would be brought inside the definition of a vehicle in the rule against using one in a way likely to cause harassment, alarm, distress or nuisance.
  • Spitting would be added to the rule against urinating or defecating anywhere but a public toilet.
  • Face coverings would have to be removed on request where they are used “purely for the purpose of concealing the identity of those committing ASB”. This wording is added to every order.
  • The six-dog limit on how many dogs one person may walk at once would apply to professional dog walkers only.
  • Assistance dogs wording would be aligned across every order with the council’s own assistance dogs policy.

There are local ones too. The dogs-on-leads rule on Weston seafront would extend beyond Knightstone. The seafront anti-social behaviour order, which also covers sky lanterns and illegal encampments, would extend to Sand Bay. The Weston town centre restriction on charitable collections would grow to cover utility vendors and unauthorised trading during the carnival. On Clevedon beach next to the pier, restrictions on feeding birds would be added. And the no-smoking designation at Castlewood car park in Clevedon would be removed, leaving three: Carlton Street, Walliscote Grove Road East and Walliscote Grove Road West, all in Weston.

What the consultation found

The council ran a public consultation from 2 March to 27 April 2026 and further engagement with town and parish councils from 14 July to 19 August. Avon and Somerset Constabulary and the Police and Crime Commissioner were also consulted.

Its summary of the responses is that residents want the existing rules kept and enforced rather than new ones added. The concerns named in the report are dog control and dog fouling, littering, vehicles, cycling and e-scooters, anti-social behaviour linked to alcohol and drugs in town centres, and public hygiene.

The council does not publish the results. The report says only that “full results are retained by the Environmental Protection Service”.

The enforcement admission

The report is unusually blunt about why people do not think the rules work. Previous arrangements, it says, “have not always achieved the desired outcomes due to inconsistent enforcement and unclear signage”.

Against that it sets out what has changed. More than 60 council officers are now authorised to take enforcement action. Town and parish councils have put money into the Community Response Service. Joint operations with the police targeted anti-social driving at three named hotspots: Royal Sands, Sand Bay, and Salt House in Clevedon. Those produced 16 Section 59 vehicle seizures in the first six months of 2026.

The equality assessment attached to the report records a medium negative impact on disabled people and on people on low incomes or experiencing homelessness. It names the risk in plain terms: enforcement can displace rather than solve rough sleeping and street-based activity, and there are “concerns about criminalising poverty”. The action plan commits officers to monitoring fixed penalty notice data by demographic within 12 months.

What it means for you

  • Cabinet has now decided. See the update at the top of this page. The Weston beach position was handed to the cabinet member, as the report proposed.
  • The car park rules are separate from parking charges. Tariffs and permits are set out in parking in North Somerset.
  • Fouling and litter rules sit alongside collections. Bin days are on our North Somerset bin collection days page.

An order can be challenged in the High Court, but only within six weeks of it being made.

Sources