I made a Freedom of Information Act request in January 2023, asking if the council used sub-contractors as wardens or if they used council staff. Their reply:

'PCC carry out enforcement activities using its own staff. Staff have appropriate training for the role including specific task based training plus other health and safety training.'

You will remember that the remit of the wardens is to threaten everyone with the police if the do not give their name, address, date of birth and email address. We know the police have no interest in dog issues of this nature, and so does Plymouth City Council.

So bullying and issuing empty threats seem to be part of the training.

The council has cleared our local public recreational land through issuing these threats.

Further, I was followed for two hours by two PCC wardens with body cameras on Feb 7 23. During the two hours my companion and I were subjected repeatedly to listening to them calling the police. They took up critical emergency lines simply to bully us into giving them our details. They knew it was an empty threat.

As well as being bullied, we were taunted by their singing: '£100 for letting your dog off the lead, £100 for not giving us your name, and there's two of you, so that's £400!'

Also, they taunted me by singing my address in a sing-song voice, they assured us they would not give up and would even put in overtime to ensure they got our information.

When my companion explained for the nth time that he had a pacemaker, they jeered back 'Yeah, an' I got a camera!' They were revelling in it.

We are both seniors and have both been badly affected by this episode.

Please post a comment to express how you react to this atrocious behaviour and what you think of Plymouth City Council's reply to this incident.

PCC said: 'We are looking into whether our officers exceeded their remit on this occasion but we will continue to enforce dog control laws on sports pitches.'

Please remember to use the comments section on the petition site!