Hastings Borough Council has approved a modest but revealing extension to its Dog Control Public Space Protection Order: from November, anyone in charge of a dog in the borough will be expected to carry a suitable bag, receptacle or other means of clearing up after it.
The change moves the council’s approach one step further than the traditional offence of failing to pick up dog faeces. Under the renewed order, an authorised officer will be able to ask a dog walker to demonstrate that they are equipped to do so. Failing to produce a suitable means of cleaning up, without a reasonable excuse, will itself constitute an offence.
Cabinet approved the proposal on 7 September alongside the renewal of the wider Dog Control Public Space Protection Order, or PSPO, for another three years from 7 November 2026. Councillors also agreed to relax a separate restriction at Hastings Castle, allowing dogs into the castle grounds provided they remain on leads.
The seemingly small change to the fouling rules is significant because it alters the point at which enforcement becomes possible.
At present, an officer generally needs to establish that a dog has fouled and that the person responsible failed to remove the waste. That can be difficult in practice: dog fouling is usually a brief event, enforcement officers cannot be everywhere at once, and the owner may have left before a complaint is investigated.
The new condition creates what council officers describe as a preventative offence. Instead of waiting until someone actually fails to clean up, officers can intervene earlier by checking whether a dog walker is capable of complying with the existing obligation in the first place.
A preventative rather than punitive tool
The distinction matters.
The purpose of the measure is not primarily to generate fines against otherwise responsible dog owners who happen to be stopped in the street. Hastings Borough Council explicitly states that the provision should not be regarded as a mechanism for issuing large numbers of Fixed Penalty Notices.
Rather, officers envisage using it in targeted patrols, educational work and areas where dog fouling has repeatedly generated complaints. The council argues that simply having the rule available may itself encourage people to prepare properly before walking their dogs.
That makes the measure a relatively light-touch example of preventative regulation.
The underlying logic is straightforward: if the behaviour society wants is for owners to clean up after their dogs, requiring them to carry the means of doing so reduces the opportunity to claim afterwards that they were unable to comply.
It shifts regulation one stage earlier in the chain.
A similar principle operates in many other areas of public policy. Authorities do not always wait until harm has occurred before intervening; they sometimes impose small preparatory obligations designed to make compliance with the primary rule more likely.
In Hastings, that means the relevant question will no longer be only, “Did you leave dog waste behind?” It may also be, “Were you equipped to avoid doing so?”
Strong support in the consultation
The measure also appears to have unusually broad public backing.
The council received 253 consultation responses, 245 of them from Hastings residents. Fifty-six per cent of respondents identified themselves as dog owners, meaning the consultation was not dominated solely by residents seeking tighter restrictions on other people’s pets.
Of those responding, 84 per cent supported renewing the PSPO, while 96 per cent supported requiring anyone in charge of a dog to carry a suitable means of removing faeces. Eighty-three per cent also supported allowing dogs on leads within Hastings Castle grounds.
That 96 per cent figure is particularly notable because it suggests the new requirement has support across the traditional divide between dog owners and non-dog owners.
The consultation comments nevertheless reveal more complicated attitudes underneath the headline number.
Some dog owners argued that existing restrictions, particularly on beaches, were already too extensive. Others worried about genuine situations in which somebody might simply forget their bags or use their final one during a walk. Respondents also repeatedly called for more waste bins, clearer signs and better information for visitors.
Both dog owners and non-dog owners raised another problem: rules are of limited value if nobody is available to enforce them.
Enforcement is the real test
That may ultimately be the most important issue.
Hastings already prohibits dog fouling across the borough. Dogs must also be kept on leads on the promenade, exclusion rules apply in specified areas, and one person may not walk more than six dogs at a time. The PSPO also governs access to beaches, parks, playgrounds and other public spaces.
The difficulty is not necessarily the absence of rules.
It is establishing visible and credible enforcement without creating the impression of an authority searching for technical infractions.
The council appears conscious of that risk. Its own report repeatedly describes enforcement as needing to be proportionate and stresses that the new bag requirement should support patrols, education and deterrence rather than become a prolific source of penalties. It also acknowledges that enforcement by the council’s warden team must compete with other priorities for limited staff resources.
That framing is important because preventative powers can easily lose public legitimacy if applied mechanically.
Consider two very different scenarios.
In the first, officers patrol a location that repeatedly suffers from dog fouling, engage with walkers, explain the rules and use the power against individuals who clearly have no intention or ability to clear up after their animals.
In the second, officers indiscriminately demand bags from dog walkers in otherwise problem-free locations and issue penalties for isolated mistakes.
The legal power might be identical. The public response would not be.
Councils that rely too heavily on penalty notices risk turning a measure intended to improve behaviour into a dispute over revenue-raising and bureaucratic overreach. Used selectively, however, the same power can make enforcement more credible while requiring relatively little intervention.
Why dog fouling remains difficult to police
Dog fouling is a classic example of a low-level nuisance that is disproportionately difficult to regulate.
The individual incident is small. The cumulative effect is not.
A single owner failing to clear up creates a limited problem. Repeated across streets, parks and footpaths, however, it affects cleanliness, creates health concerns, generates complaints and can make shared public spaces noticeably less pleasant.
Traditional enforcement is structurally weak because the likelihood of an officer witnessing the precise moment of an offence is low.
Residents can report fouling, but retrospective enforcement is difficult unless the individual responsible can be identified. Cameras and intensive patrols are expensive relative to the seriousness of each individual offence.
The “carry the means to clean up” requirement attempts to address precisely this enforcement gap.
It does not prove that somebody would have failed to pick up after their dog. Nor should it be treated as though it does.
Instead, it establishes a basic condition of responsible dog ownership in public: if a person takes a dog outside, they should be prepared for the predictable possibility that the animal will defecate.
The burden involved is minimal — usually little more than carrying one or two bags.
A broader balancing exercise
The renewed PSPO is not solely about fouling.