POLICE in Powys responded to reports of a fox hunt in the county earlier this week.

Dyfed Powys Police received a report of a hunt taking place in the Sennybridge area, near Brecon, on Tuesday, November 16. No arrests were made as none of the hunt party were located when police arrived on the scene, but several spectators were spoken to and one individual was reported for driving offences.

The force’s Rural Crime Team said: “The team were deployed to a report of a fox hunt in the Sennybridge area today, no persons from the hunt were located but several persons observing the hunt were spoken to by officers.

“One individual was reported for driving offences.”

Fox hunting with dogs has been illegal in England and Wales since 2005 following the introduction of the Hunting Act 2004, while the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002 came into force in Scotland two years earlier.

The Act does not cover the use of dogs in the process of flushing out an unidentified wild mammal, nor does it affect drag hunting, where hounds are trained to follow an artificial scent.

The Act came into force on February 18, 2005. The pursuit of foxes with hounds, other than to flush out to be shot, had been banned in Scotland two years earlier. Such hunting remains permitted by the law in Northern Ireland, where the Act does not apply.

But while these were both welcome and hard-fought pieces of legislation, overwhelming evidence suggests both are either being ignored or exploited by hunts on a regular basis.