(Note:  This item was deferred from the last Council meeting on 22 September 2016.)

At the meeting of the Council in October 2016, the Mayor requested that the Overview and Scrutiny Board consider undertaking a review of the issues raised within the submitted motion on badger culls and that the Board make recommendations to him.

Resolved:  that the Mayor be advised that the Board does not consider the issue of badger culls to be a priority for Torbay Council and therefore is unable to allocate time to this request within its Work Programme.

(Note:  This item was deferred from the last Council meeting on 22 September 2016.)

Members considered a motion opposing any further extension to the badger cull areas, notice of which was given in accordance with Standing Order A14.

Councillor Doggett proposed and Councillor Darling (S) seconded the motion as set out below:

This Council wishes it to be known that it is opposed to any culling of badgers on council owned land and land leased to third parties including the Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust.  The recent badger culls have been a catalogue of errors, contradictions and last minute changes, deviating from expert advice from the start. No control zone studies were established for the pilot culls, no post-mortems were organised and no details of scientific monitoring established.  There has been no proof established that badgers shot were infected ones.

In the cull, the cost of the cull has been established at £6,775 per Badger, this includes policing and equipment.  It would be better for the police to be dealing with actual crime issues, and the money already wasted so far would be better used at Council level for helping our Residents problems!  Undisturbed Badgers live in a stable close knit social group, which tend to have limited movement from one area to another and as a result, if a badger sett was harbouring TB, then it would tend to remain relatively isolated.  Culling actions disrupt the social groups and opens up the territory, causing individuals to roam further afield and, if infected will pass this infection on to sets which are not infected!  This is what is known and referred to as perturbation, and Government has already acknowledged that this is likely to have happened in the recent cull held in Gloucestershire!

This Council calls on our Members of Parliament to oppose any further extension to the cull to other areas and resolves not to allow any further pilot culls to take place within the boundaries of Torbay and instructs the Executive Lead for Environment to notify the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as well as our MP’s accordingly.

In accordance with Standing Order A14.3(a), the motion stood referred to the Mayor.

The Mayor requested the Overview and Scrutiny Board to consider undertaking a review on the issues raised in the motion and make recommendations to him on its findings.