The regular demonstrations at Highfield House Hotel in Portswood have not met the “significant” threshold for police to act, city councillors were told.
Members of multiple political parties on the local authority’s overview and scrutiny management committee said they supported moving the protests to a different location.
Cllr Rob Harwood, Conservative, said: “Although I agree with the right to protest, the protests to happen in that location now it’s time expired, it shouldn’t be happening.”
Cllr Harwood asked if police had any powers to move the protest to a location that was manageable and away from the contentious issue and the roadside.
Chief Inspector Charlie Ilderton, deputy district commander, said: “Put simply, no.
“We have (powers), but the threshold for that is so significant for us to do that.
“We are not near that at the moment.”
Labour cabinet member for leisure and communities Cllr Toqeer Kataria said everyone had been able to protest outside the hotel in Highfield Lane for some time to express their views and demonstrators should move on to a different location.
He said the option of Speakers’ Corner in Hoglands Park had been put out into the public domain but it had no impact.
Rob Henderson, executive director of wellbeing, children and learning, said “significant and substantive” conversations around moving the protests from Highfield House Hotel had taken place with both the council and police legal teams.
He said it was felt the threshold to trigger intervention had not been crossed.
Mr Henderson said: “We won’t leave that conversation.
“It is an ongoing conversation but at the moment the powers are not there for us to do that.”
Green Party councillor Matthew Renyard said he found the situation “a little bit confusing”.
Cllr Renyard said: “If this was happening outside my residence every single week, and I am not talking about the people who live opposite the hotel, but the people who live in the hotel, and there were people angry towards me in my residence, my place of residence, I understand there are laws in place that enable you to move people on after a period of time of demonstrating outside somebody’s regular residence.”
He added: “I just really want to understand what it is that is different about the law and the rights of those individuals within the hotel as opposed to my rights in my home because to me that seems like a really bad disconnect.”
Chief inspector Ilderton said police had a positive duty to facilitate peaceful protest and an aspect of this related to the location people were protesting about.
The senior officer said the powers in question were used for the first time in Hampshire in relation to changing the route of a protest march in the city last year that was deemed to meet the high threshold of serious disruption.