ABSTRACT
Case precedent – R v Somerset County Council ex parte Fewings [1995] 1 All ER 513 (CA) (QBD)
Facts: A Judicial Review application was made by William Charles Fewings, William Stewart Leyland and Richard Down, representatives of the Quantock Staghounds, against the decision by Somerset County Council on 4 August 1993 to ban the hunting of deer with hounds on its common land at Over Stowey Customs Common. The land in question was a strip of 148 acres on which the Quantock Staghounds had hunted since 1917. The Council’s acquisition of the land was governed by s 120(1)(b) Local Government Act 1971. The Council’s main reason for forbidding hunting was that it involved ‘unacceptable and unnecessary cruelty to the red deer who were the victims of the chase’.
