Early August 2020 and Mark Hankinson was emailed by the hunt, they clearly weren’t happy with the amount they were paying the Masters of Foxhounds Association(MFHA):
MFHA registration fees are calculated at 2% of turnover, from a three year average, give or take .5% this was clarified on point 13 of the MFHA meeting minutes in September 2019. The bulk of the money goes towards the AXA legal fees insurance which as a hunt you get in return for your yearly registration. This in turn means that hunts are paying for legal fees insurance based on their income rather than their behaviour. So a less well off hunt may pay considerably less than the Hampshire Hunt but may be making regular legal fees insurance claims because of how frequently they get into trouble. Whilst some may applaud the MFHA’s “socialist” policy of making everyone pay according to their turnover, some of the bigger hunts will quite rightly be questioning why they are paying huge amounts for legal fees insurance which they never use.
An easy way for these hunts to save thousands of pounds each year is to simply drop out of the MFHA and pay legal costs as they incur, a hunt could save tens of thousands of pounds in a ten year period by simply acting within the law and if they are caught doing something wrong, just plead guilty, take a small fine and carry on as they were.
The Hampshire Hunt are in the process of telling the MFHA to get stuffed, check out the comment on the MFHA fees on their expenditure finances from this financial year;
The hunt finances look particularly poor as they are going well into the red, but they are on the verge of selling off woodland and retaining the sporting rights which will net them around a million pounds. Having large amounts of assets didn’t stop them from pestering their local council and getting two COVID grants worth £10,000 each.
East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) small business grant, a much more in depth look at their finances is available on this pdf of profit and loss account. Another document that goes into the sale of the woodland and how they hope to also get involved in property development, is their meeting minutes from Nov 2020, which you can read here.
The last line of the doc is interesting, the hunt are going to start wearing hi viz jackets since the webinars leak and mention “the damaging video of comments from the MFHA AGM”
The running commentary of the failures of the MFHA and Hampshire Hunt desire to leave them, continues throughout a recent strategy meeting they had, the following is the document they produced after that meeting:
“More trailing” how can a hunt that only does trail hunting do more?
Looks like the MFHA are about to be told some time soon that the Hampshire Hunt don’t want to be with them anymore, due to its poor reputation:
Another document that was particularly interesting is record of hounds age on Feb 2021, only a handful of 8 and 9 year old hounds left. What happened to all the other hounds born in 2012, 2013 etc?
The hunt does puppy sponsorship to raise funds and the adopted “grandparents” get to go and visit them. But what happens when the hound is shot due to a minor injury or just can’t keep up anymore, are the sponsors informed? This from Feb meeting minutes:
January 2021 meeting minutes weren’t particularly interesting although members were reminded about internet security:
On the point of internet security, they didn’t mention facebook security. They do have quite a few members in their facebook group, you can view them all in this word document here.
The spreadsheet of members, farmers and subscribers can be found here, and don’t forget; “the antis have been getting smarter and are targetting landowners”