On 13 November, Gloucestershire Police’s Rural Crime Team announced that the Heythrop Hunt had been issued with a Community Resolution because of its out of control hounds. This is a small step for the police, but is significant because it shows that forces can take action if they are inclined to do so.
The incident in question took place on 18 October 2024. Three Counties Hunt Saboteurs explained what happened:
“After meeting at Wyck Rissington the Heythrop Hunt went on to search for foxes in the coverts North of Bourton on the Water. They were found hunting from a dismantled railway line and they then lost all control of the hounds for half an hour. Nb, this is very close to the Fosse Way. A very busy road. Several residents have been in touch to say hounds were running down residential streets and it is feared that one hound at least was injured.”
The sabs stated that notorious huntsman Chris Woodward was
“a long way from the pack and unable to get near them due to the terrain.”
A Community Resolution can be imposed for a low-level crime. It is, however, arguable as to whether it is low-level when hounds run riot on streets, presenting a danger to people in vehicles and family pets.
Road Traffic Act
Hound havoc on roads and railways is all too common, and Protect the Wild repeatedly reports on incidents where drivers are endangered or when hounds are hit by vehicles and die.
For this Heythrop Hunt incident, the police took action under Section 27 of the Road Traffic Act, which concerns the control of dogs on roads, and where:
“A person who causes or permits a dog to be on a designated road without the dog being held on a lead is guilty of an offence.”
However, frustratingly there are a couple of exemptions to this subsection of the law, one being if the dogs are proved:
“to have been at the material time in use under proper control for sporting purposes.”
Protect the Wild has previously pointed out:
“this exemption raises valid questions about a) when is a dog being used for a ‘sporting purpose’, and b) how ‘under proper control’ is defined…‘Proper control’ is hard to define, but dogs that are dashing in and out of speeding cars on an A road are not ‘under proper control’. Hunts are registered businesses and should be held legally responsible if one of their dogs causes a road accident involving injury, illness or death.”
This is yet another loophole in UK legislation which enables hunts to get away with causing chaos, mostly with impunity. Too often we see hunts being let off the hook, such as the Warwickshire Hunt, which got away with what the police called “anti-social use of the county road network”; or the Cattistock Hunt, which trespassed on the Waterloo railway line when hounds chased a fox.
Protect the Wild is campaigning for the Hunting Act to be scrapped and replaced by new legislation, The Hunting of Mammals Bill, that would shut down hunts completely. One reason we need to urgently change the law is to prevent hunts from causing havoc on roads, railways and in people’s gardens.
