“5. … it involves … gatherings of two or more people where some of those present engage in motor racing, motor stunts or other dangerous or obstructive driving. Street cruises also attract participants who, whether or not they are taking part in the driving or riding, support or encourage others to do so, play loud music, rev their engines, show off their own cars, and engage in other similar antisocial activities. These activities are highly dangerous, having caused serious injury and, in some cases, fatalities. The activities taking place at these cruises are frequently unlawful.”
“(2) ‘Car Cruising’ organised or impromptu events at which drivers of cars race, perform driving stunts, drive dangerously and drive in convoy. Such activities may be noisy, dangerous and illegal, obstructing highways and the premises bordering them, damaging property and putting the safety of spectators and other persons at risk. … (4) ‘Stunts’ Driving manoeuvres often undertaken as part of car cruising including: (a) ‘Burnouts’ Causing a vehicle to destroy its tyres by applying power to the drive wheels while braking so as to remain in place while the wheels revolve at speed. (b) ‘Donuts/Donutting’ Causing a vehicle to rotate around a fixed point (normally the front axle) while not moving-off causing noise, smoke and tyre marks to be created. (c) ‘Drifting’ Turning by placing the vehicle in a skid so that most sideways motion is due to the skid not any significant steering input. (d) ‘Undertaking’ passing a vehicle on its nearside so as to overtake in circumstances not permitted by the Highway Code.”
“17. By section 130,Highways Act 1980 , the Claimants are under a duty to assert and protect the rights of the public to the use and enjoyment of any highway for which they are the highway authority. The injunctive relief sought in these proceedings is necessary to protect the rights of the public to the use and enjoyment of highways within the Claimants' districts. 18. Bysection 6 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 , local authorities must formulate and implement, inter alia, a strategy for the reduction of crime and disorder in their areas (including anti-social and other behaviour adversely affecting the local environment), which strategy the authorities must keep under review for the purposes of monitoring its effectiveness and making any necessary or expedient changes. 19.Section 17(1) Crime and Disorder Act 1998 provides that: “Without prejudice to any other obligation imposed on it, it shall be the duty of each authority to which this section applies to exercise its various functions with due regard to the likely effect of the exercise of those functions on, and the need to do all that it reasonably can to prevent, crime and disorder in its area.” 20. The Claimants contend that taking measures to combat car cruising falls within and forms part of their statutory function (set out above) to reduce crime and disorder in their areas.” “Without prejudice to any other obligation imposed on it, it shall be the duty of each authority to which this section applies to exercise its various functions with due regard to the likely effect of the exercise of those functions on, and the need to do all that it reasonably can to prevent, crime and disorder in its area.”
“21. The Claimants will rely upon the witness statements filed with this Claim Form and those filed in support of the adjourned application to extend the Original Injunction. 22. In summary the Claimants aver that: (1) Persons participating in car cruising meet on highways and areas adjacent to highways. Such areas include industrial estates and carparks. (2) The locations for such meetings vary but are to be found throughout the Black Country. (3) Such meetings may be publicised in advance via social media or word of mouth or may be impromptu. (4) At such meetings some or all of conduct set out above takes place. (5) Such conduct affects the safety, comfort, well-being and livelihoods of inhabitants of the Black Country. (6) Such conduct diverts the resources of the Police, Ambulance Service and hospitals away from other legitimate matters. 23. The Original Injunction was effective in reducing and inhibiting car cruising. 24. Since2 February 2021 car cruising has again increased with more events and larger numbers of spectators at such events. The Police are receiving an increased volume of calls relating to such activities. 25. Such increased activity has continued following the relaxation of restrictions on social gatherings imposed during the covid-19 pandemic. There appears to be a growing perception among those who engage in car cruising that the Claimants and the Police are impotent to restrict the activity. 25A The conduct described above frequently involves the commission of criminal offences which is deliberate and which cannot adequately be prevented or restrained by the use of criminal law sanctions. 25B Such offences may include but are not limited to: (1) Dangerous driving; (2) Speeding; (3) Racing; (4) Driving without insurance 25C The said conduct is also tortious and, in particular, constitutes a public nuisance. … 30. The Claimants aver that car cruising causes and is capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to persons in the Black Country and that [the] car cruising creates a significant risk of harm to such persons.”
“(1) The High Court may by order (whether interlocutory or final) grant an injunction … in all cases in which it appears to the court to be just and convenient to do so.”
“In everyone's interest, and particularly so in urban areas, that a local authority should do what it can within its powers to establish and maintain an ambience of a law-abiding community and what should be done for this purpose is for the local authority to decide.”
“It is made plain by the highest authority that the jurisdiction to grant an injunction in support of the criminal law is exceptional and one of great delicacy to be exercised with caution (Gouriet v Union of Post Office Workers[1977] 3 All ER 70 at 83, 91, 99, 117,[1978] AC 435 at 481, 491, 500, 521). Where, as in the present case, Parliament has shown a clear intention that the criminal law shall be the means of enforcing compliance with a statute, the reasons for such caution are plain and were fully explained by their Lordships in Gouriet. The criminal law should ordinarily be pursued as the primary means of enforcement. The case law shows that the archetypal case in which this jurisdiction is exercised is one in which a criminal penalty has in practice proved hopelessly inadequate to enforce compliance … … The guiding principles must I think be: (1) that the jurisdiction is to be invoked and exercised exceptionally and with great caution …; (2) that there must certainly be something more than mere infringement of the criminal law before the assistance of civil proceedings can be invoked and accorded for the protection or promotion of the interests of the inhabitants of the area: see [Stoke-on-Trent City Council v B & Q (Retail) Ltd[1984] AC 754 at 767B, 776C], and Wychavon District Council v Midland Enterprises (Special Events) Ltd(1986) 86 LGR 83 , 87; and (3) that the essential foundation for the exercise of the court's discretion to grant an injunction is not that the offender is deliberately and flagrantly flouting the law but the need to draw the inference that the defendant's unlawful operations will continue unless and until effectively restrained by the law and that nothing short of an injunction will be effective to restrain them …”
“1. This appeal concerns a number of conjoined cases in which injunctions were sought by local authorities to prevent unauthorised encampments by Gypsies and Travellers. Since the members of a group of Gypsies or Travellers who might in future camp in a particular place cannot generally be identified in advance, few if any of the defendants to the proceedings were identifiable at the time when the injunctions were sought and granted. Instead, the defendants were described in the claim forms as ‘persons unknown’, and the injunctions similarly enjoined ‘persons unknown’. In some cases, there was no further description of the defendants in the claim form, and the court’s order contained no further information about the persons enjoined. In other cases, the defendants were described in the claim form by reference to the conduct which the claimants sought to have prohibited, and the injunctions were addressed to persons who behaved in the manner from which they were ordered to refrain. 2. In these circumstances, the appeal raises the question whether (and if so, on what basis, and subject to what safeguards) the court has the power to grant an injunction which binds persons who are not identifiable at the time when the order is granted, and who have not at that time infringed or threatened to infringe any right or duty which the claimant seeks to enforce, but may do so at a later date: ‘newcomers’, as they have been described in these proceedings. 3. Although the appeal arises in the context of unlawful encampments by Gypsies and Travellers, the issues raised have a wider significance. The availability of injunctions against newcomers has become an increasingly important issue in many contexts, including industrial picketing, environmental and other protests, breaches of confidence, breaches of intellectual property rights, and a wide variety of unlawful activities related to social media. The issue is liable to arise whenever there is a potential conflict between the maintenance of private or public rights and the future behaviour of individuals who cannot be identified in advance. Recent years have seen a marked increase in the incidence of applications for injunctions of this kind. The advent of the internet, enabling wrongdoers to violate private or public rights behind a veil of anonymity, has also made the availability of injunctions against unidentified persons an increasingly significant question. If injunctions are available only against identifiable individuals, then the anonymity of wrongdoers operating online risks conferring upon them an immunity from the operation of the law.”
“139 … In sympathy with the Court of Appeal on this point we consider that this constant focus upon the duality of interim and final injunctions is ultimately unhelpful as an analytical tool for solving the problem of injunctions against newcomers. In our view the injunction, in its operation upon newcomers, is typically neither interim nor final, at least in substance. Rather it is, against newcomers, what is now called a without notice (ie in the old jargon ex parte) injunction, that is an injunction which, at the time when it is ordered, operates against a person who has not been served in due time with the application so as to be able to oppose it, who may have had no notice (even informal) of the intended application to court for the grant of it, and who may not at that stage even be a defendant served with the proceedings in which the injunction is sought. This is so regardless of whether the injunction is in form interim or final.”
“142. Recognition that injunctions against newcomers are in substance always a type of without notice injunction, whether in form interim or final, is in our view the starting point in a reliable assessment of the question whether they should be made at all and, if so, by reference to what principles and subject to what safeguards. Viewed in that way they then need to be set against the established categories of injunction to see whether they fall into an existing legitimate class, or, if not, whether they display features by reference to which they may be regarded as a legitimate extension of the court's practice.”
“167. These considerations lead us to the conclusion that, although the attempts thus far to justify them are in many respects unsatisfactory, there is no immoveable obstacle in the way of granting injunctions against newcomer Travellers, on an essentially without notice basis, regardless of whether in form interim or final, either in terms of jurisdiction or principle. But this by no means leads straight to the conclusion that they ought to be granted, either generally or on the facts of any particular case. They are only likely to be justified as a novel exercise of an equitable discretionary power if: (i) There is a compelling need, sufficiently demonstrated by the evidence, for the protection of civil rights (or, as the case may be, the enforcement of planning control, the prevention of anti-social behaviour, or such other statutory objective as may be relied upon) in the locality which is not adequately met by any other measures available to the applicant local authorities (including the making of byelaws). This is a condition which would need to be met on the particular facts about unlawful Traveller activity within the applicant local authority's boundaries. (ii) There is procedural protection for the rights (including Convention rights) of the affected newcomers, sufficient to overcome the strong prima facie objection of subjecting them to a without notice injunction otherwise than as an emergency measure to hold the ring. This will need to include an obligation to take all reasonable steps to draw the application and any order made to the attention of all those likely to be affected by it (see paras 226-231 below); and the most generous provision for liberty (ie permission) to apply to have the injunction varied or set aside, and on terms that the grant of the injunction in the meantime does not foreclose any objection of law, practice, justice or convenience which the newcomer so applying might wish to raise. (iii) Applicant local authorities can be seen and trusted to comply with the most stringent form of disclosure duty on making an application, so as both to research for and then present to the court everything that might have been said by the targeted newcomers against the grant of injunctive relief. (iv) The injunctions are constrained by both territorial and temporal limitations so as to ensure, as far as practicable, that they neither outflank nor outlast the compelling circumstances relied upon. (v) It is, on the particular facts, just and convenient that such an injunction be granted. It might well not for example be just to grant an injunction restraining Travellers from using some sites as short-term transit camps if the applicant local authority has failed to exercise its power or, as the case may be, discharge its duty to provide authorised sites for that purpose within its boundaries.”
“It is necessary for the Court to find, in relation to a final injunction, something higher than the balance of convenience, but because I am not dealing with the final injunction, I am dealing with an interlocutory injunction against PUs, the normal test applies. Even if a higher test applied at this interlocutory stage, I would have found that there is compelling justification for granting the ex parte interlocutory injunction, because of the substantial risk of grave injury or death caused not only to the perpetrators of high climbing on cranes and other high buildings on the Site, but also to the workers, security staff and emergency services who have to deal with people who do that and to the public if explorers fall off the high buildings or cranes.”
“39. … the evidence in the present case was enough to indicate a PSPO might well be ineffective. Breach of a PSPO is a non-arrestable offence carrying only a financial sanction (whether by prosecution or by service of a fixed penalty notice). As one item of evidence (among many) mentioned by Mr Bird records, ‘a caller complains that the vehicles go when police arrive and simply return when the police have moved on’. There may also be potential difficulties about what does or does not constitute a ‘public space’; how large that public space can be; and whether a PSPO can properly cover the activities of those who organise or advertise street cruises.”
“5. Given the fact that street-cruising involves a large number of vehicles and spectators, it poses a very serious risk to public’s safety not only to the individuals who are often standing both on and off the carriageway watching in very close proximity and encouraging these activities, but also to other road users going about their business. In my experience there is never any kind of stewarding or marshalling of the spectators and again this significantly raises the threat, harm and risk factors relevant to those individuals. The dangers posed have been evidenced on numerous occasions in recent times, whereby 5 individuals have lost their lives due to dangerous driving stemming from illegal street cruising. These fatalities included spectators and drivers who were actively taking part in street cruising.”
“22. This new Section 222 High Court Street cruising injunction application is requesting spectators to be included within the injunction. I would like to broach this issue with the court to highlight the dangers caused by the attending spectators. … 25. I often call street cruising or street racing a spectator sport, in certain areas of the Black Country I have personally witnessed hundreds of spectators standing in very dangerous locations, they can be seen recording the footage on their phones, which later gets posted on the various social media sites. In my experience the more spectators line the streets, roundabouts or junctions the more dangerous I see the driving become. It is clear that the drivers will be encouraged to perform more stunts such as drifting around islands at greater speeds than would have been done without the crowds. 26. I cannot overstate how dangerous these meets are to spectators. Unfortunately, my concerns became a reality on20th November 2022 . On that evening a street cruising meet was gathered on Oldbury Road, Sandwell, when a street cruiser lost control of his vehicle, crashing into 5 spectators. This collision led to the loss of two young lives, individuals both of whom I personally knew from my involvement in tackling street racing. These two individuals had stood at the side of the road to spectate the racing on that stretch of road. The three other spectators received life changing injuries. Just one moment of madness led to change the lives of so many.”