THERE’S a plan to impose what’s called a Public Spaces Protection Order in the centre of Swindon.

The idea is to forbid antisocial behaviour, which is a great. The less antisocial behaviour we have there, the less risk of the place ending up looking like a deserted, rejected set from The Walking Dead.

Unfortunately there’s a danger of this becoming one of those situations when the council sets out to do something right and good, only to end up catching flak.

Critics of the plan say it would mean musicians and street artists such as pavement poet Danny Rowland being banned unless they got official permission to be there, and the same would go for street traders and plenty of others who might not be a problem.

That’s why I think there should be a change in the plan to make the order operate only on a case-by-case basis. Then there’d be less risk of throwing out any babies with the bathwater.

Officials should start with an online survey. It wouldn’t have to be complex; they could make it the equivalent of those feedback posts at airports, where you’re supposed to tap a little light-up face to give an instant opinion on the service after passing through security.

There’s a happy face, a slightly less happy face, a slightly unhappy face and a very unhappy face.

I’ve always said there should also be a wincing face for when they’ve set about you with the rubber gloves or failed to warm up the sniffer dog’s nose.

Instead of just having a handful of general categories to give an opinion about, there should be more of a breakdown.

So instead of, say, being asked to deliver a verdict on street artists in general, we’d be asked to give personal verdicts on Mr Rowland and his poetry.

Or the people who do those weird perspective-bending things that make it look like a big pit has opened up. Or the ones whose pavement art consists of taping some pre-drawn copies of old masters to the pavement in the morning, accepting donations while doing a bit of colouring in during the day and then taking everything up again once the shops close.

Or, come to think of it, the artists with the sand sculptures. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never seen them doing any actual sculpting, just touching them up with a wee brush.

And the sculpture always seems to be of a dog lying down – the same dog, the same pose, the same size, no matter what day it is, what time it is or whether you’re in Swindon, Scarborough or Scunthorpe.

They’re so perfect, in fact, that to the untrained eye they look almost as if they’ve been made by packing wet sand into big plastic moulds.

I like their dogs, but sometimes I wish they’d sculpt something different, such as a big squid. Maybe I’ll ask the next time I see a sculptor in town.

We should also get to deliver verdicts on buskers, such as the older gent with the harmonica and the knowledge of music hall classics. He’d get a great big smiley face, which is more than can be said for the people who lurk in dark corners and randomly tootle cider fumes through penny whistles.

The order is also supposed to apply to charity collectors.

Dedicated tin-rattler who stands in all weathers for no reward other than chilblains and a sense of having made a difference? Smiley face. Annoying, commission-driven twerp trying to guilt pensioners into paying for the chief executive’s next cruise? Nah.

In the long term, we could make the town centre a better, fairer place, short term it’ll at least be less of a horror to walk through, especially if it’s a Saturday morning and you have a hangover.

The same goes for religious, folk. We could keep the nice, cheery ones for whom the ‘God is love’ bit is the most important, and ditch the ones who say Hades awaits if you so much as suffer an attack of wind without praying for forgiveness.