MP Matt Western has voiced concern at a secret deal struck between Warwickshire Police and Warwickshire Hunt.
The private arrangement, which no one but a few senior police officers and Warwickshire Hunt members know the details of, has led to concerns about whether policing was following due process.
Police have received a flood of complaints from rural residents in Warwickshire about the activities of the hunt in recent years.
They include hounds running across roads and stopping traffic, including in one case in front of an ambulance on its way to an emergency call, and also the hunt going onto people’s land uninvited.
This led to Warwickshire Police serving a community protection notice (CPN) on the hunt in December 2022.
The CPN meant the hunt had to let police know where and when they crossed main roads, and breaching the conditions would amount to a criminal offence.
The hunt appealed the CPN but as the court date approached the case “disappeared”.
This was because a protocol had been agreed between the hunt and senior officers of Warwickshire Police – but no one else knows the details of the deal.
Warwick and Leamington MP Mr Western said the deal set a “really dangerous precedent” for how policing was done.
He said: “What we have here is some kind of special arrangement which has been agreed by two parties including the police that cannot be in the best interests of the public.”
Mr Western has raised the matter as a national policing issue with home secretary James Cleverly, with the environment department, with Warwickshire Chief Constable Debbie Tedds and Warwickshire Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Seccombe – but says he has got nowhere.
But Warwickshire Police’s acting chief constable David Gardner said the protocol agreed between the force and Warwickshire Hunt was far wider reaching than anything the CPN originally stipulated.
He continued: “The protocol was agreed between solicitors for both sides during a mediation and is therefore confidential.
“Neither a CPN nor a protocol impacts on our ability to investigate and seek prosecution for criminal acts.”
That was a view echoed by Warwickshire Hunt joint master Lizzie Sinden who said it was not a private deal but a settlement out of court, adding that she did not think the public needed to know about it.
And Ms Sinden believed the deal was working as the hunt remained accountable to Warwickshire Police and was not free from potential prosecution.
