Restrictions on street preachers and abortion protests up for approval at Belfast Council tonight

During a committee meeting last month, councillors voted to bring in new restrictions on the volume preachers can speak at, as well as what images can be shown by anti-abortion protesters.

That vote is to be rubber-stamped by a full council meeting tonight, after which the new bye-laws will be sent to Stormont for approval before returning to the council for a final agreement to put them in force.

Last week the Christian Institute raised fears that a code of conduct for street preachers that could be created as part of the byelaws “gives the city council carte blanche to impose whatever restrictions it likes on street preachers”, which the body described as “a wholly unjustifiable imposition on freedom of speech”.

The byelaws also mean buskers and street preachers can’t turn their amplifiers up louder than 70 decibels, roughly equivalent to the sound of a vacuum cleaner or a noisy restaurant, which will put Belfast at a lower volume limit than many other comparable cities – for example, Dublin has laws setting an 80db limit on buskers.

They also ban anti-abortion protesters from displaying “graphic imagery" on posters or T-shirts, which is defined as “pictures, illustrations, images or any other visual representations of aborted and/or miscarried remains of human embryos, foetuses or babies”.

Although the restrictions are opposed by many unionists, nationalists and Alliance are in favour of them, meaning they’re almost certain to be voted through at tonight’s meeting.