A COUNCIL voted to move a trail hunt ban motion to a scrutiny committee last week. 

Gloucestershire County Councillors rejected the anti-hunt wording of a motion but agreed that the future of hunting on land owned by the council will be decided by their Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee. 

In June, a motion was proposed by a Labour councillor which aimed to ban trail hunting, hound exercise and other lawful hunting from taking place on land owned by Gloucestershire County Council.

Countryside Alliance members across Gloucestershire and members of the hunt community urged the council to vote against this motion. But it was not debated as they ran out of time. 

A revised version of the motion was put forward at a meeting last Wednesday (September 13). 

The motion said: “Council is opposed to the use of Gloucestershire County Council land for trail hunting, exempt hunting, as defined in Section 2 and Schedule 1 of the Hunting Act 2004, hound exercise and hunt meets and asks Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee to establish a cross party working group to consider, and make recommendations to council, on any actions that could be taken in respect of this matter.”

The leader of the council, Cllr mark Hawthorne, made it clear he was not in support of the wording. 

"The reason we are moving the procedural motion is because we feel that if we vote for the motion [as it stands], not only would we be agreeing to some of the terms made within the motion around the issue of hunting and also the issue of the rights of our tenants and we don’t want to do that," he said.

"If we are going to have an honest and open debate, we don’t go to an honest and open debate with a prerequisite which has already been written out and agreed by the council. We want this to go to Corporate Overviews to have a full and open and thorough debate on all of the issues.”

Attempts to be trail hunting on land in North Northamptonshire, Cornwall and Essex have all failed. 

Polly Portwin, director of the Countryside Alliance’s Action for Hunting campaign, added: “We welcome news that Gloucestershire County Council did not agree with the terms of the motion which proposed to ban trail hunting on council-owned land. As councillors in North Yorkshire agreed earlier this week, there can be no justification for banning or restricting a lawful activity on council-owned land or imposing unnecessary terms on their tenant farmers.

“We urge Gloucestershire councillors to stand up for their rural constituents in the face of divisive calls to have their way of life curtailed and hope that when presented for scrutiny, these malicious calls to ban trail hunting are rejected, as they have been by other councils.”