Analysis of business rate relief records by Grantham Against Bloodsports (GAB) and Protect the Wild has revealed the extent to which taxpayers are supporting hunts, some of which have had members convicted of illegal hunting.
A total of 35 hunts have claimed £958,564.54 in rate relief from 22 councils over the last two decades. There is also data showing many of these claimed Covid-related grants during 2020 and 2021, bringing the total cash given to hunts during the pandemic to £481,312.28. In some cases, however, we obtained Covid-related financial data only. This amounted to 13 hunts across three councils. In total, then, GAB and Protect the Wild obtained financial details for 48 hunts claiming relief and grants from 25 different councils, equalling £1,439,876.82. The window of time mostly extends between 2001 and 2020, although there is a small amount of data before and after this range.
You can view Protect the Wild’s spreadsheet here.
However, as will be explained, there is also evidence that many more hunts have received such rate reliefs.
It is important to note, as councils responding to GAB’s freedom of information requests repeatedly highlighted, that reliefs aren’t cash payments given to hunts. Instead, these figures represent the amount of National Non-Domestic Rates (NNDR), or business rates, that a hunt would have to pay on the property it uses, but has been given relief from. The value of the NNDR is soaked up by the council, using taxpayer money to cover the cost. Covid-19 grants, meanwhile, were direct cash payments sourced from central government and then distributed by district authorities.
Business Rates
Hunts receive rate relief because they are registered as a business. All small businesses, which the government defines today as a business that has one non-domestic property with a rateable value of £15,000 or lower, are eligible for a discount on what they pay to the council. Any property valued at £12,000 or less is given an automatic 100% discount, while anything between £12,001 and £15,000 receives a progressive relief rate. This figure would be progressively lower going further backwards in time; for example, it was set at £12,000 or lower in 2010. In the case of hunts, this relief was almost always given out for kennels.
There is a wide variety of rate relief schemes and the data shows hunts have claimed for many of them. Nonetheless, the most common relief claimed by hunts is small business rate relief (SBRR), which functions as previously described. Another common relief hunts have claimed is discretionary relief, which is reserved for charities and community sports clubs. Transitional relief is also regularly claimed. This limits how much a rate can change per year so as to ease the introduction of significant rate increases. Other types of relief appear less frequently and are largely self-explanatory.
The amount each council has soaked up from hunts varies wildly from body to body. At the low end, records obtained by GAB show the Forest of Dean District Council granted £5,197.92 in relief to just one hunt, the Ledbury Hunt, and only in 2022. At the other end, Melton Borough Council has aided just two hunts – the Belvoir and Quorn – to the tune of £191,568.58. Somerset West and Taunton District Council (now part of Somerset County Council) came in second with £157,744.83 of support for the Taunton Vale Foxhounds, West Somerset Foxhounds and West Somerset Vale Hunt.
One unusual situation is found in the Hampshire Hunt. East Hampshire District Council has, since 2003, granted SBRR on two properties owned by the hunt at the same address: the kennels, and the stables. As SBRR is limited to a single non-domestic property, Protect the Wild contacted the council for clarification of the situation. However, at the time of publishing, it has yet to respond.
While rate relief isn’t a payment from the council to the hunt, the wider impact is not negligible. When relief is given to one business, the shortfall of income for the council needs to be made up elsewhere. This might be increased rates imposed on other businesses that don’t qualify for SBRR, as outlined in a paper [p7] by CBRE UK, or else it is funded by central government [p7]. In other words, the value of tax avoided by hunts doesn’t just disappear. The rest of us are paying so that hunts don’t have to.
Covid Grants
Covid grants to hunts made national news at the time of the pandemic, with the Independent reporting in September 2020 that more than £160,000 had been given to hunts across England. Five years on, and after GAB’s tenacity in pursuing freedom of information requests, we now know of nearly half a million that was distributed to hunts.
Available data shows that councils handed out £481,312.28 of Covid-related grants. Unlike rate relief, these weren’t deductions from money owed to the council. These were cash payments given by the councils to organisations, including hunts, as a way of keeping them afloat at a time when normal business was impossible. Most of the data looked at by Protect the Wild concerned grants given during the first national lockdown between March and May 2020 as well as during the local lockdowns imposed later that year and into 2021.
The Cottesmore Hunt was by far the biggest beneficiary in the data seen by Protect the Wild. Rutland County Council made six payments to the Cottesmore Hunt during 2020 and 2021, totalling £45,859.30. This included a single £25,000 payment under the Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Grant scheme, which had a higher ceiling than the £10,000 maximum of the Small Business Grant Fund. The Quorn Hunt, meanwhile, was given £39,500.14 by Melton Borough Council across five payments, even as the hunt made national news for conducting a meet during lockdown. The same council also made two payments to the Belvoir Hunt totalling £30,359.78. Whilst these are extreme outliers, GAB’s evidence shows that many hunts received at least the £10,000 Small Business Grant introduced in April 2020.
Several councils such as Somerset West and Taunton District Council and East Devon District Council hinted at the link between SBRR and Covid-19 Grants. Meanwhile, Cornwall Council’s reply to GAB made the link clear, saying:
“…the eligibility towards the initial Small Business Grant Fund, was dependant on whether the business was eligible for relief under the Business Rate Small Business Rate Relief Scheme and not the nature of the business.”
This strongly suggests that, even where there’s no direct evidence showing a hunt received a Covid-related cash payment, if it was receiving SBRR then it likely received at least the £10,000 first payment. Conversely, where there is evidence that a hunt received a Covid-19 grant, it’s likely it was also receiving SBRR, even where we were unable to uncover those figures.
Living Off the Taxpayer
Some of the hunts featured in this spreadsheet are connected with convictions for illegal hunting. The Middleton Hunt, for example, claimed £2181.94 SBRR in 2014 even as four of its members including its master-huntsman admitted illegal hunting in August 2013. Meanwhile, the South Shropshire Hunt’s master-huntsman Daniel Cherriman was convicted in 2022 while figures show it received £5,863.25 in relief in 2021 and was still receiving benefits in 2023. Sabs and monitors have exposed many others for chasing wildlife, disturbing badger setts, and serious assaults.
Yet what’s covered here is far from exhaustive. Beyond the hunts for which a range of data was obtained, there were also several cases where limited data was found. In some cases, this meant only figures for a single year of SBRR were available; in others, it meant that council documents showed hunts received SBRR but without accompanying numbers. These are collected on the Misc tab of the spreadsheet. What numbers are available add up to a total of £38,321.37 of relief across nine hunts. There are a further 13 hunts for which no figures were found.
What this ancillary data highlights is threefold. Firstly, these hunts likely received more than a single year’s worth of SBRR. Secondly, adding their numbers to the evidenced figure would drive the total higher by tens if not hundreds of thousands, especially when adding in Covid grants. Thirdly, it suggests that many more hunts across England have benefited and continue to benefit from these rate reliefs.
Alongside the similarly taxpayer-funded farming subsidies also claimed by some hunts, it appears hunting industry’s survival is in part dependent on claiming benefits from government. Yet anti-hunting activists have known since the outset of the ban that packs across the country have continued chasing and killing wildlife despite the law. More recently, even the police and legal system have started accepting this fact. That raises the crucial question, then, as to whether organisations whose primary function is to break the law ought to have their criminal activities supported by taxpayers?
As new anti-hunting legislation is considered by the government, consistency in opposition to the practice is essential. The law should not claim hunting is illegal on the one hand whilst handing it financial benefits for hunting on the other. The hunting of foxes, hares, deer and mink must be opposed on all fronts.