We have been hearing recently, and were able to confirm yesterday evening that at least two police forces in England and Wales are now treating hunts operating in their areas as Organised Crime Groups (OCGs).

An OCG is defined as a group which:

• has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, the carrying on of criminal activities, and
• consists of three or more people who agree to act together to further that purpose. 

It appears that this change has been led by the leaked on-line meetings of the Hunting Office and a subsequent criminal prosecution where Mark Hankinson, 60, of Sherborne, Dorset the Director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association was found guilty of intentionally encouraging huntsmen to use legal trail hunting as “a sham and a fiction” for the unlawful chasing and killing of animals via two webinars held in August 2020. This case has been well reported by Rupert Evelyn of ITV News here.

Clearly this shows a change of attitude which has long been called for by those concerned that ‘trail hunting’ is being used as a smokescreen to allow hunts to carry on activities that have been illegal for many years now. It remains to be seen whether other police forces will follow suit and whether this will become national policy in England and Wales but it is a small step in the direction of policing “without fear or favour” and we shall watch further developments with interest.