Revealed: The Hunts Bankrolled by Your Taxes Even After Breaking the Law

New research carried out by Protect the Wild and Grantham Against Blood Sports has revealed that more than £1m in farming subsidies have been handed out to hunts since 2000. In some cases, these subsidies have represented a notable proportion of a hunt’s profits. And these payments have continued despite convictions for illegal hunting.

Analysis of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments available from FarmSubsidy.org shows that a total of 37 different hunts across England have received money between 2000 and 2022, the most recent year for which figures are available. Click here to view Protect the Wild’s summary spreadsheets. Total payments equal £1,012,008.50, with the bulk of that figure accounting for payments after the Hunting Act was passed.

CAP payments support the agricultural industry by subsidising farmers in a volatile market. They are determined and paid out by the EU to member states. These payments are also designed to encourage biodiversity and combat climate breakdown. After leaving the EU in 2020, the UK began creating its own equivalent, known as Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS). However, the government is phasing ELMS in slowly, so many UK recipients continue receiving CAPS payments in 2025.

Of the 37 hunts, 28 were regularly subsidised over the course of multiple years, whilst 18 were still receiving payments in 2022. Those 18 are:

1. Belvoir Hunt

2. Burton Hunt

3. Cotswold Hunt

4. Croome & West Warwickshire Hunt

5. Dartmoor Hunt

6. Devon & Somerset Staghounds

7. Dulverton (West) Foxhounds

8. East Devon Hunt

9. East Kent Hunt (now Kent Hounds)

10. Eggesford Hunt

11. Fernie Hunt

12. Ledbury Hunt

13. Melton Hunt Club*

14. North Staffordshire Hunt

15. Quorn Hunt

16. South Dorset Hunt

17. Warwickshire Hunt

18. Woodland Pytchley Hunt (now Pytchley with Woodland Hunt)

* The Melton Hunt Club isn’t a hunt in itself, but an initiative by the Belvoir, Cottesmore and Quorn hunts to fundraise for hunt country in the region of Melton Mowbray.

The ten hunts that received regular subsidies in the past were:

1. Braes of Derwent Hunt – last payment in 2014

2. Cleveland Hunt – last payment in 2009

3. Crawley & Horsham Hunt – last payment in 2013

4. Cumberland Farmers Foxhounds – last payment in 2009

5. Grafton Hunt – last payment in 2021

6. Puckeridge Hunt (now Puckeridge & Essex Union Hunt) – last payment in 2014

7. South & West Wiltshire Hunt – last payment in 2014

8. South Shropshire Hunt – last payment in 2009

9. Suffolk Hunt – last payment in 2020

10. West Somerset Foxhounds – last payment in 2009

And the remaining nine hunts that received just one or two payments were:

1. Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt

2. Cotswold Vale Farmers Hunt

3. Dart Vale & South Pool Harriers (now Dart Vale, South Pool, Modbury Harriers)

4. East Essex Hunt

5. Essex & Suffolk Hunt

6. North Cotswold Hunt

7. Old Berkshire Hunt

8. West Norfolk Foxhounds

9. Zetland Hunt

Image: North Dorset Hunt Sabs of the BSV Hunt killing a fox

Why Do They Receive Money?

It is unclear from publicly available evidence what exactly the subsidies were provided for. However, from 2014 onwards, the CAP payments sheets record the figures in categories that loosely explain why each recipient received their subsidy. Amongst hunts, most money came from three categories: the Basic Payment Scheme, greening practices, and reimbursements for financial discipline.

The Basic Payment Scheme (now scrapped in England) was a broad category that covered all productive activity , such as farming crops and animals. Greening practices, meanwhile, are intended to help encourage broad biodiversity and climate breakdown goals. That includes crop diversification and leaving grassland undisturbed. A reimbursement for financial discipline is money returned after the government had taken a cut in the previous year.

These three categories are part of CAP’s Pillar 1 objectives. In some cases, hunts also received money under Pillar 2 objectives, also known as rural development programmes. These are programmes designed to encourage social and environmental sustainability in the local region.

How are these related to hunting with hounds in the UK? The most direct is hunts’ ownership of land. Some hunts own at least some of the land they hunt on, including coverts such as hedgerows and woods where wildlife lay up or try to hide. Former Kimblewick huntsmaster Andrew Sallis wrote an article for the Countryside Alliance in 2022 extolling the allegedly “progressive effect on the environment” that hunts have. Sallis highlighted the Belvoir Hunt – one of the most represented in CAP payments – saying that it:

owns and manages 15 woodlands in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, holds an annual hedgelaying competition every autumn.

It’s likely, then, that hunts are largely receiving CAP payments for this type of activity. However, there is a reason hunts continue maintaining land that they use for meets. As sab and monitor groups have consistently exposed, and as Protect the Wild has highlighted through its annual reports, the intentional chasing and killing of wildlife remains prolific two decades after it was banned.

In summary, then, taxpayer-funded subsidies meant for a better and healthier world are instead used for abhorrent and criminal ends.

Photo by Sarah Agnew on Unsplash

The Grants Are a Lifeline

CAP payments aren’t equally spread amongst hunts. Some have received only small amounts; the Cumberland Farmers Foxhounds received a total of £700.07 during the four years it claimed, and the Crawley & Horsham Hunt received £1,828.86 during the eight years it was claiming. On the other hand, some have received truly staggering amounts. The Cotswold Hunt, for example, has received £162,430.64 since 2000. Meanwhile, the South Dorset Hunt has received £150,867.29 since 2000. The Melton Hunt Club has received £121,101.61 since 2006, meaning both the Belvoir and Quorn hunts have benefited from two sets of subsidies.

For some of these hunts, the subsidies represent a significant part of their accounts. In 2022, for example, the Cotswold Hunt had retained earnings of £40,953 whilst its subsidies for that year were £16927.27. The CAP payment was equivalent to 41.33% of the hunt’s profits that year. In the previous year, when the Cotswold Hunt had much higher retained earnings of £142,242, its payment came in at £12,746.87 – an equivalent to 8.96% of the hunt’s annual profit.

In some cases, payments have been made to hunts tied directly to illegal hunting. The huntsman and terrierman of the Fernie Hunt were convicted of Hunting Act and Protection of Badger Act offences in 2011, for example, whilst the hunt claimed subsidies throughout those years and until the most recently available records. Three members of the Crawley and Horsham Hunt were convicted of illegal hunting in 2012, whilst the hunt continued claiming subsidies into 2013. Ollie Finnegan was convicted of illegal hunting in 2022 whilst heading up the Quorn Hunt, which continues receiving CAP payments. Meanwhile, the Burton, South Shropshire and Warwickshire hunts have all had staff convicted for hunt-related actions throughout 2024 and 2025, so it remains to be seen if those hunts will claim subsidies during these years and beyond.

Beyond convictions, there is also ample evidence from sabs and monitors showing many of the other hunts involved with illegal hunting. Perhaps most notable is the unremittingly grim activities of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, which sabs witnessed chasing 17 deer during the 2024/25 season and killing a further 12. Previous seasons resulted in similar figures, and the beginning of the 2025/26 season has shown the hunt intends to continue its killing spree. The hunt has claimed a total of £18,874.73 since 2009.

They’re All Culpable

In 2018, the Stody Estate in Norfolk became a test case for the relationship between criminal activity and CAP payments. The estate’s head gamekeeper was convicted in 2014 for poisoning birds of prey, leading the Rural Payments Agency to penalise the estate by reducing its 2014 payment by 75%. Stody Estate appealed the penalty, leading to a series of judgements that called into question the legal requirements of statutory management requirements (SMRs) cross-compliance for subsidies.

Law firm Michaelmores said that the High Court ultimately quashed the penalty because the case didn’t satisfy Article 23 of Council Regulation (EC) No 73/2009 because the gamekeeper’s actions couldn’t be evidenced as directly attributable to the Estate itself. In other words, the gamekeeper was seen as acting of his own volition. However, Michaelmores said the court gave examples of how an estate might be considered responsible:

Obvious examples given by the Court of circumstances in which poisoning wild birds might be said to be “directly attributable” to the farmer were: a positive instruction/encouragement given by the farmer to an employee to kill the birds; a failure to provide reasonable instruction or training; or a failure to take steps to end the activity on becoming aware of killings taking place

Hunts in England and Wales have often avoided liability as a corporate body by piling blame onto hunt staff, throwing the huntsman or whipper-in under the bus to save the masters and the hunt. The Stody Lodge case provides a legal perspective on why a hunt might make this decision. There has been only one case of a hunt successfully convicted as a corporate body: the Heythrop Hunt in 2012.

Nonetheless, evidence has repeatedly shown that the actions of a huntsman are rarely a decision by him or her alone, but rather a decision that enacts the will of the hunt as a whole. The infamous video of the Avon Vale Hunt digging two foxes out of the ground for hounds to chase included not just hunt staff but Aaron Fookes, who was master-huntsman, as well as field riders watching on from off-screen. When the huntsman and whipper-in of the West Norfolk Foxhounds were convicted of illegal hunting in 2024, footage showed several riders in black jackets (either field riders and/or masters) watching on as a terrierman trespassed to recover the body of a killed fox from a private residence.

Moment before a fox was killed in a private back garden by the West Norfolk Foxhounds

Although an estate might be better able to hide its culpability in wildlife crime because of its broader scope, the nature of hunting with hounds makes the connections much more visible. Claiming that a huntsman acts of his own accord without the knowledge or even permission of the masters and hunt as a corporate body is therefore farcical. Satisfying Article 23 of Council Regulation (EC) No 73/2009 should therefore be easier.

Cut the Lifelines

There is one problem with that, though: Article 23 of Council Regulation (EC) No 73/2009 is no longer in effect in the UK. It was replaced in the EU in 2013 by Regulation (EU) No 1307/2013, which has slightly different wording around compliance with SMRs, and then detached completely following the UK’s exit from the EU. The UK’s subsidy system has now abolished cross-compliance, instead introducing delinked payments as the way forward for landowners.

What this means is that rather than complying with rules set out in subsidy-specific legislation, compliance is with existing legislation. The Farming Advice Service provides some examples of UK laws equivalent to former CAP SMRs, such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 replacing the SMR for wild birds.

Hunts have already had more than a million pounds to subsidise their cruelty and bloodlust: that mustn’t continue. Hunts shouldn’t be getting subsidies from the taxpayer at all, of course, but at the very least a conviction should put an end to their benefits and the benefits of those who enable them. This should also extend to non-hunt landowners hosting hunts. Illegal hunting has thrived on landowners turning a blind eye, but mounting evidence from across the entire hunting industry should belie any landowners’ claims of innocence.

When the Hunting Act first came in, the Countryside Alliance reassured landowners [page 8] “that Single Farm Payments will not be withheld if they have given… permission” for a hunt that results in a conviction for illegal hunting. Twenty years later, this is another loophole that needs tightening up. It is essential that penalties on farming and environmental subsidies are a consideration in any new anti-hunting legislation.

---

Support Protect the Wild with a small monthly donation

Times our really hard right now for organisations like ours. We rely solely on the generosity of the public and don’t have any major funders behind the scenes. Despite being a relatively small group we are so proud of our output and it is thanks to every single person who chips in a few pounds a month that we can continue our vital work.

We do everything we legally can to fight for British wildlife. From undercover investigations, animations, journalism, report writing, equipment and mental health support for activists, protests, pressure campaigning..

Our monthly goal is to find 100 new supporters who believe in our mission and can afford to give anything from £2/3 a month in the fight for British wildlife.

We’re currently on 14! Help us reach our monthly target! :)