The Newt Hotel remains silent despite 10,000+ people asking them to ban the BSV Hunt

We're looking for volunteers to get involved with this campaign!

So you may remember a week or so ago now we asked you to take action and contact The Newt in Somerset (supposedly one of the world’s best hotels) and request that they stop allowing the fox killing BSV Hunt on their land.

This email is an update on the campaign so far and are plans going forwards. As of the second I am writing this we are yet to receive a single reply from the hotel. Not one. And that’s despite over 10,000 of you sending our open letter and a couple of calls to the hotel to ask that they engage in some form of conversation.

It’s pretty shameful and disrespectful to say the least. Thousands of people are disgusted that such a well known venue would associate itself with one of the worst offending fox hunts in the country. And The Newt in Somerset won’t even bother giving any reasoning as to why they have for so long allowed this hunt on their land. They’re simply hoping that people like us will just forget about it and move on. And over the last week or so they have even turned off the ability to leave comments their social media posts. At the time of writing you can now leave comments on their Instagram and Facebook accounts.

This campaign is important because The Newt is in many ways a flagship countryside hotel. They pride themselves on being ‘The World’s Best Boutique Hotel’ and have hosted the likes of the Beckhams and Beyonce. So in asking that they stop allowing the BSV Hunt to use their land we are also sending out a clear message to every other business across the UK that they shouldn’t be associating with those who kill animals for pleasure. (More to follow on this and the creation of a directory listing establishments that support hunting or shooting).

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Next steps - Local press, leafleting and a demonstration outside the hotel

So where does that leave the campaign? Well it is looking promising that local press are going to run a story about the situation after so many of you rallied behind the petition in such a small amount of time. So thank you to every single one of you that took the time to take this action. Please do sign the petition if you haven’t already done so. It will be interesting to see how The Newt chooses to respond to the media about the ongoing campaign.

Going forwards we will continue to ask that The Newt does the right thing and stops allowing the BSV Hunt on their land. One avenue we are looking at is leafleting, particularly in Somerset and the local area to the hotel. So if you are reading this and you are wanting to get more involved with the campaign, have some free time in evenings after work or at weekends, please do get in touch with us. Drop us an email - volunteer@protectthewild.org.uk - with your name, location and how many leaflets you would be willing to distribute in your local area.

We have already designed up a leaflet ready to go and we are looking to post out in the region of 20-30,000 of them across Somerset. Leaflets are very cheap to produce and look to be a super effective way for us to build awareness around this campaign and get people talking. Especially when a lot of the hotel’s revenue actually comes from their members who pay to access the gardens and grounds. We think it is only right that the 1/4 million yearly visitors are made aware of the fact the venue is happy to host wildlife killers on their grounds.

A demonstration outside the hotel is also on the agenda. We will be speaking to locals and other campaigners in the coming weeks to arrange a day to physically hand in our petition and speak to visitors arriving to the hotel. We do have some other campaigning strategies but for now we shall keep these up our sleeve.

As always, when speaking to the hotel please keep all communications polite and respectful. And if someone from the hotel is reading this post please don’t hesitate to get in touch and start a conversation.

In the meantime there are a few things you can do to help us keep up the pressure:

• Sign the petition

• Politely phone the hotel and ask them why they are ignoring 10,000 people asking that they stop allowing a gang of wildlife abusers on their land - 01963 577700

• Email us at - volunteer@protectthewild.org.uk if you live locally to the hotel or in Somerset and want to enjoy the sunshine and do some leafleting

• Contact Somerset Live and ask them to report on this story - somersetcopy@reachplc.com

• Get ready to share our future posts on social media on this campaign