Police Response

Without going into detail, its covered on the NWHSA website, seven hunt saboteurs were charged for alleged aggrevated trespass at a shoot near Hoghton Tower. The case took eighteen months to be brought to court by Ps David Brown and Pc Duncan Thomas and needless to say it quickly collapsed.

It turns out that the shoot 'breached health and safety legislation, thereby committing an offence and making their activity unlawful'. If that's the case, why were charges not brought against the shoot?

Both officers were also involved in the decision not to charge the gamekeepers of the Hoghton Tower shoot over their Larsen Traps. Compare their email (below) to the 'Shooting Community' with their total refusal to explain the decision regarding the Larsen Traps.

From: Brown, David 383
Sent: 14 April 2008 15:21
To: Thomas, Duncan
Subject: Brindle court case

Duncan, as discussed brief overview of the result of the Brindle case:

The defence raised the issue that for the defendants to commit the offence of disrupting a 'lawful activity' under aggravated trespass legislation, then the shoot itself had to be perfectly lawful and they could not be committing any specific offences.The defence put forward that the shoot syndicate has five or more employees and therefore falls under Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and Management of Health and Safety at Work regulations 1999. BASC itself defined employees as keepers, beaters, pickers, helpers, etc, anyone under the supervision and control of somebody else and not even necessarily being paid.

Under that legislation the activity must have a written health and safety policy and risk assessments in place at the time. The incident at Brindle was on 11 Nov 2006 and they did not have the documents in place on that date. The prosecution barrister took the case to legal arguement but it became clear that without the document in place, the shoot breached health and safety legislation, thereby committing an offence and making their activity unlawful. The offenders cannot in that situation commit the aggravated trespass offence and the case was dismissed.

BASC have pro formas for health and safety risk assessments and guidance for the formulation of a health and safety policy. It would appear that many other syndicates are in a similar situation and don’t have this in place. This could have wide ranging implications for future offences and the Shooting Community need to promote the fact that ALL syndicates need to get their houses in order, definately prior to next season.

As discussed can you distribute this info to your contacts and look at getting some publicity.