Reading Bailiff Removal of fly grazing horses

Background

A landowner Mr Evans was having problems with horses that had been grazing on his land without permission for around a week. He was in the process of completing a sale of the land to a builder for a development of houses, but the builder would not proceed with the horses there, so he had to act quick.

He had tried to reason with the owner of the horses, but they were very hostile to him and totally unsympathetic to the predicament he was in. At one stage they tried to extort money from him to remove the horses.

Horse Bailiffs

Mr Evans was looking online at solutions and read an article on the Controlled Horses Act 2015. He then found Quality Bailiffs and made contact with the Horse Bailiffs Reading based department to enquire about the cheapest and fastest solution to his problem. After having a conversation he was advised the two fastest solutions available to him and what the procedures were for each.

He did mention that he was going to remove the gate and fences surrounding the land. Other people frustrated with the process and being burdened with this responsibility have mentioned this before. It was explained that if he did this and the horses left his land and caused a road traffic accident he would be legally liable and could be prosecuted.

Mr Evans sought legal advice, and this was verified by his solicitor and he advised Mr Evans to proceed with the removal through the use of Horse Bailiffs. He then again contacted Quality Bailiffs Reading office for more information and details of his options.

Risk Assessment

Our Reading Horse Bailiffs would attend the site and:

• Check the condition that the horses were in
• Check to see if the horses are micro chipped
• Check what the access to the land is like for the access of vehicles if we removed the horses
• Check how many animals were at the site and what sex the animals are
• Take photographs of the animals

Option 1

• The bailiff would then leave the site without leaving any paperwork and organise the removal of the animals.
• When the horses had been removed they are placed in livery until 96 hours have expired. The owner of the horses has 96 hours (not including Saturdays and Sundays) to make contact and prove ownership of the animals.
• When they have done that, they must pay all the costs before arrangements are made for the return of the animals.

Option 2

• The bailiff will leave notices at the entrance to the land giving the owner of the horses 96 hours (not including Saturdays and Sundays) to remove the horses before then arranging for a vet and horse transportation to remove the horses for re homing.
• The horses would no longer belong to the previous owner and now belong to the landowner.
• The bailiffs would then arrange the wellbeing checks of the horses, obtaining passports and the microchipping of the horses. When this is completed the horses will be rehomed.
• Once the horses have been rehomed the landowner will be given no information on the location of the horses, so the stables do not receive reprisals from the horse owners.

The Removal

Mr Evans contacted other companies to get advice and a rough estimate of costs from these. One of these companies even contacted Quality Bailiffs to do the job for them as contractors and put a percentage on top of the quote for themselves. This was turned down as Quality Bailiffs do not carry out subcontract work for the following reasons.

• The removals must be risk assessed and other companies will not do that, they will just attend the site leave a letter and then return to remove the animals.Most of the time this can end in a disaster, they even try to carry out the removal just with Bailiffs and no specialist horse handlers.
• Specialist insurance needs to be held to carry out this kind of work and the standard bailiff companies unlike Quality Bailiffs these companies do not hold this insurance.

Mr Evans decided to instruct using option 2. He completed the instruction form and the paperwork was prepared, and the Enforcement Agent arranged to attend the site the next day.

When Reading based bailiff attended the site, he completed the 5 checks that are carried out on all Risk Assessments. It was noticed that one of the animals was lame and noted which animal it was on his report sheet and left the notification signs on the entrances to the land. The Bailiff left notices at the entrance to the land informing the owner of the horses what was happening giving him 96 hours to remove the horses from the land. He then left site and filled out the report sheet and forwarded that to the Quality Bailiffs Reading office. At this stage the specialist staff at the office prepared the appropriate risk assessment and attached that to the case.

Having received no contact from the owner of the horses a full quote was given to Mr Evans and he instructed Quality Bailiffs Reading to proceed with the removal. The police were informed an incident number was obtained. Arrangements were then made for the manpower comprising of Bailiffs, dog handlers, horse Handlers with transport and a vet with tranquilisers.

The Reading Bailiff team along with the other specialists attended the site at 6.30am a few days later and removed the horses. Mr Evans had been informed of the time and date of the removal as he wanted to arrange for a contractor to attend with his JCB and tractor to plough the field and dig a trench along the boundary so nobody else could put horses on the land before he had sold it to the developer. The horses were removed from the site within 90 minutes and then the bailiffs contacted the contractor who was waiting at a safe distance from the site and within hours the land had been made unusable for fly grazing so the housing developer would purchase the land.

Mr Evans via his solicitor then got a county court Judgment to enforce against the horse owner to recuperate the costs of this and again returned to Quality Bailiffs High Court Enforcement Officer Division.

We can help

Quality Bailiffs has over twenty five years of experience in removing fly grazing horses.

Read more information about our fly grazing horse eviction service.

read more horse removal articles