This should be an interesting one. Camden Council have announced plans to pursue a test case through the courts which, if successful, could bring an end to flyposting in major UK cities. The plan is to seek Anti-Social Behaviour Orders against top executives at the UK HQs of BMG and Sony on the basis that their respective flyposting campaigns constitute anti-social behaviour.
If the council managed to secure such an order, said executives could be brought up before the courts every time their record label ran a flypost campaign, and if they persistently disobeyed the order they could face a jail sentence.
The Council hope that by tackling flyposting with Anti-Social Behaviour Orders they will overcome the existing loophole in the law in which record labels sidestep liability for flyposting. Labels currently escape prosecution by ensuring a fast turn over of posters on any one site - by the time any landowner (or council) has gone through the legal process of demanding posters are removed, a new set of posters have already been pasted on top.
Announcing the action, Camden Council Leader Dame Jane Roberts told CMU yesterday: "Flyposting is a similar sort of behaviour to graffiti, in that it involves the illegal and non-approved use of property, degrading that property and making an area seem uncared for and an unpleasant place to be. Flyposting has a detrimental impact on the value of property and contributes to people's fear of crime and, as a result, to actual criminal behaviour, which is why we are seeking to outlaw it."
Louise Casey, Director of the Home Office's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit added: "Camden is at the forefront of the Government's TOGETHER campaign to tackle not tolerate anti-social behaviour. Environmental crime, such as flyposting, can increase fear of crime and foster an environment where crime and anti-social behaviour can thrive. It creates eyesores that blight our communities and damage people's quality of life. We hope Camden Council, the Police, businesses and local people can work together to eliminate the problem of flyposting in Camden, so that our communities can live and work in clean and safe spaces free from crime, grime and anti-social behaviour."
Camden's decision follows an announcement by the Keep Britain Tidy Group last October that they were working with local authorities to find new ways to get hardline over flyposting. Pointing out the irony of record labels getting high and mighty over illegal downloading, while fully backing illegal flyposting, they vowed to help local authorities who hadn't the energy or expertise to fight the companies who flyposted in UK cities. Supporting Camden Council's actions, Keep Britain Tidy boss Alan Woods told CMU yesterday:
"There's a common myth that struggling artists, political campaigns and local promoters do the most fly-posting. They don't. It's large multi-national record companies that smear these ads all over city centres - and then leave us with the bill to clean them up. What's more, the presence of these tatty posters does much to make neighbourhoods look squalid and unsafe. I'm really pleased that Camden is cracking down on the problem by targeting the real villains in all of this - we're behind them 100 per cent."
No word yet from either BMG or Sony on Camden's action - though the Anti-Social Behaviour Order process is quite quick so we should know if Camden have been successful in a few weeks time.