A warning to all dog owners, coming to a park near you. All dogs to be on leads at all times.
North Somerset Council tried and failed to ban dogs from the beach at Weston Super Mare all year round. We protested and got the ban lifted. Great you may be thinking, that shows how much the council is listening to its people. Wrong. The ban was introduced by hiding the proposed ban on their website, with an option to reply and pass comments of course. Little did the people know that the ruling was coming as not many people knew about the proposal.
Now the same people in the council have found an ancient by-law which gives them the power to fine dog owners for not keeping dogs on leads in public places. This again has been kept secret from the public in the hope that it will be put into place without any fuss or objection. Unfortunately this will not be true, we have found out about it and we are fighting to keep the dogs right to exibit their natural behaviour and explore their environment (under supervision and under control at all times of course by the owners). Be prepared for your local authority to try similar, if they have not already done so.
News just in, It is not only Weston Super Mare that is starting to enforce stupid restrictions on dog owners, I have recently heard that Burnham On Sea is starting to do the same, This is a different council to North Somerset. It seems that the news of possible by-laws to use on restricting dogs has spread.
Found out the other day the council has moved the restriction to the beach only a week before the summer ban was due to start, a local dog owner was confronted about having her dog off lead on the beach and was told there were signs stating that this rule had come into effect. Two days later I investigated to find no such signs, but did not doubt that council had started to bring in the dogs on leads rule to the beach. Stupid thing is, the other side of the pier, where dogs can go all year round, no such restriction.
Watch this space.....
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