Belvoir Hunt Boxing Day Meet cancelled

The Annual Belvoir Hunt Boxing Day Meet in Grantham will not be going ahead for the second year running.

In a correspondence from SKDC sent to us by an anonymous member of the public this morning, it states

“Thank you for your enquiry regarding the Boxing Day/New Years Day Hunt Meets.

We are advised by our Head of Corporate Operations, that the hunt will not be visiting Grantham over the festive period.

As such we can confirm that South Kesteven District Council will not be hosting the hunt on its land on Boxing Day or New Years Day.”

A representative from Grantham Against Bloodsports said “The cancellation of the Belvoir Hunt, Boxing Day meeting should have taken place in 2018 following the serious assaults carried out by Hunt employees and four masked men on two Hunt Monitors.

“GABS raised these issues at SKDC meetings in the following years, but they failed to act.

“Following that conviction, we highlighted serious short-comings in the safety, organisation and
management of the Boxing Day meeting.”

This was highlighted at the Grantham Charter Trustees
meeting in Jan 2019 when the following statement was made by a councillor.

“In the past the Greeting of The Hunt was done ‘on the nod’ and that no paperwork was filled in, no
one was advised and that telephone calls were made, the Hunt attended, drinks were given and
people turned out for the Event. It turns out that we were ‘wrong’ or the Hunt was wrong about
where the responsibility lay with regards to The Hunt”

“The animal welfare issues, recently highlighted by the National Press & TV also questions the
association of Grantham with the Belvoir Hunt Meeting. The ill-treatment of hounds and the alleged
abuse of a horse at a Cottesmore Hunt meeting only emphasises that fact. This month another case
comes to court in Cornwall regarding the alleged killing of a 14-year-old pet cat by a hunt. These acts
appear endemic in Hunts with little regard for public property or pets.

“The Hunt usually respond with ‘heritage and tradition’ as reasons for permitting this event. Hunting
was banned by law in the 2004 Act. The tradition of hunting foxes & killing them with hounds was
made illegal. Trail hunting is what the hunts then claimed to be doing and if true then this was an
entirely new activity, which could not be described in any terms of heritage or tradition.

“The recent conviction of a director of the MFHA for encouraging illegal fox-hunting also raises
serious doubts about the reputational damage this event would bring on Grantham. The recent
conviction relating to the smokescreen trial shows that trail-hunting is just a cover for illegal hunting,
they never stopped killing.

“The flouting of the law at all levels has now been exposed and this event should never be re-instated
in Grantham.”