The Failings Lay with the Police

On 27 August, District Judge Barnes threw out animal welfare charges against both directors of Cheshire Forest Hunt Limited. He did it at half time, on a submission of no case to answer, before either woman had said a word in her own defence. The prosecution evidence, he found, was "weak, vague and inconsistent", and no tribunal properly directed could convict on it.

Ruling on costs, he was unambiguous about where responsibility lay. “The failings in this case lay with the police."

Elizabeth Gorse, a retired vet, and Teryl Knowles were charged under section 9 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 over events near Great Barrow on 12 February 2025. On the prosecution's account, hounds on a laid trail ran off course, crossed the Mid Cheshire line and entered a field where the hunt had no permission. A man described in court as the partner of the horses' owner came out with a legally held rifle, fired two shots into the ground to frighten the hounds off, and when that did not work shot the hound Harper dead and wounded a second, Derby. Neither Gorse nor Knowles was there.

What the investigation missed

The company was never investigated or charged, though the Crown's own case required an offence by the company before either director could be liable for it. The investigating officer took no real account of what the hunt actually did, beyond some of its written policies.

No statement was taken from the Master acting on the day. Gorse, who would ordinarily have set the trail, was injured, so the route fell to a deputy, Anne Mather, who walked it with the huntsman beforehand. The professional huntsman himself, the man with immediate charge of the hounds, was never investigated at all. The judge commended his conduct and found him not open to criticism.

Cheshire Police charged the two people furthest from the field and took no account of the two closest to it.

The evidence

The Crown's expert accepted he had no experience of trail hunts, no experience of hounds and none of preparing risk assessments. He could speak to good practice concerning domestic animals.

The principal prosecution witness, Neil Hosker, was found not credible, his evidence contradicting his own prepared statement.

The letter instructing the expert should have been disclosed long before trial. It arrived mid-trial, handed over not by the police but by prosecuting counsel, who apologised because she was obliged to. It had been renamed. In May 2025, the officer in the case had certified there was no unused material capable of assisting the defence.

The rest of it the defence took from the Crown's own witness. Under cross-examination by Edward Henry KC, huntsman Fraser Campbell agreed the trail walk was a form of dynamic risk assessment, that the wounded hound had pulled his attention from the pack, and that no amount of risk assessment could have prepared him for a man with a rifle. The judge found that nothing written down would have changed anything.

Not the first time

Gorse and Knowles were not the first Cheshire hunt directors to face this charge, or the first to walk away from it.

In April 2026, a week before trial, the CPS dropped the same charge against three directors of the Cheshire Hunt over an incident at Tarporley in November 2024: David Woolley, Peter Jones and John Simpson. All three had pleaded not guilty to failing in the duty of a person responsible for animals to ensure welfare, the same duty Gorse and Knowles were said to have breached.

Two prosecutions, one force, five directors, no convictions.

Stephen Welford, who acted for the defence in both, told the court in March 2025 that the Tarporley prosecution was the first of its kind. It was not the last.

The point

Cheshire Police run a rural crime team. Its published remit covers farm machinery and vehicle theft, livestock offences, fuel theft, equine theft, poaching, fly-tipping and hare coursing. What the force found the resources for instead was an investigation running eighteen months, an expert who had never worked with hounds, a principal witness the court found not credible, a disclosure certificate signed in May 2025 that was still wrong when the trial opened fifteen months later, and four days of court time in a trial that ended at half time. None of it was directed at anyone who was present when the hounds were shot.

The hunt has said it will write to the Chief Constable to ask how an investigation of this quality was mounted and how it was allowed to reach a courtroom.