Hunting and Covid-19

The following guidance in relation to hunt-related activities and Covid-19 has been provided by the National Police Chiefs’ Council:

Regulation 5(3)(i) of the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions)a(No2)(England) Regulations 2020, as amended on the 14 September 2020, provides that there is an exemption to that restriction where ‘the gathering is a sports gathering and the person concerned is taking part in that gathering’.

A ‘sports gathering’ is defined in regulation 5(5D) as ‘a gathering which is organised for the purposes of allowing persons who are not elite sportspersons to take part in any sport or fitness related activity

• Which is organised by a business, a charitable, benevolent or philanthropic institution, or a public body,
• Which takes place on relevant premises or outdoors, and
• The manager, if the gathering takes place on relevant premises, or the gathering organiser, in any other case, complies with paragraph (5G).

A person taking part in a sports gathering does not include a spectator or a parent of any child who is taking part in the gathering.

Hunts MUST take the appropriate Health and Safety measures as well as carrying out a Covid risk assessment for any of their sporting activities as detailed in the guidance under paragraph (5G).

Compliance requires that the gathering organiser or the manager, as the case may be:

• Have carried out a risk assessment which would satisfy the requirements of regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, whether or not the gathering organiser or manager is subject to those Regulations , and
• Have taken all reasonable measures to limit the risk of transmission of the coronavirus, taking into account the risk assessment above and any guidance issued by the government which is relevant to the gathering.

Hunt followers who are spectators and not taking part directly in the sporting activity are not exempt from the legislation and must comply with the Covid restrictions, keeping a social distance and not gathering in groups larger than six people.

The same applies to parents of a child who is taking part in the gathering.

The full legislation can be viewed on the government's legislation website.