While law-making is a power typically reserved to national structures (Westminster, the devolution bodies, and arcane structures such as the Privy Council), there are other organisations in the UK which have also been granted some law-making powers.
While only these national bodies can produce primary legislation, which broadly speaking can cover anything within the competence of that body or–in Parliament’s case everything, other decision-makers can be granted a measure of legislative power within strict areas set out by primary legislation.
The most typical form of this in the UK is secondary legislation, which gives the Government the ability to make changes within the provisions set out by primary legislation. Yet, a number of statutory bodies have their own law-making powers, typically this means local authorities, but also some of these are Non-Departmental Public Bodies (e.g. the Environment Agency), and even some private companies with roles important to the national infrastrucure (water companies, rail companies, airport operators, etc.).
In Crawley Borough Council’s case, we’ve generally shied away from using byelaws as they tend to be costly to implement and enforce, preferring to use more recent powers like Public Space Protection Orders with fixed penalty notices to achieve the same effect. As a result, there’s a wide-spread assumption that the town no longer has any byelaws.
However, as of the last review in 2005, there are still seven local byelaws, even if most would be hard to enforce due to having been superseded by primary legislation. Interestingly, the two CBC byelaws which do remain enforceable, for all those who recall the furore over the PSPO for dog walking in Tilgate a couple of years back, are rules which require owners to remain in control of their dogs and restrain them where necessary in Tilgate Park, Goffs Park, and Work Park Gardens.
In reality, I find it hard to see any of these byelaws actually being enforced in the future, but out of the principle that people should be able to easily find out what rules apply to them, I’ve provided a table below outlining each, its current status and a link to the relevant text.
| Byelaw | Status | Original/copy | Enforceable |
| Milton Mount Gardens | Partially in force | Original | Yes |
| Snells Hatch | In force | Copy | No |
| Ear Piercing | In force | Copy | No |
| Tattooing | In force | Copy | No |
| Acupuncture | In force | Copy | No |
| Tilgate and Goffs Park | Partially in force | Original | Yes |
| Employment of children | In force | Copy | By WSCC |
Peter Lamb for Crawley 