A NORTH Somerset woman who owns nine dogs has slammed the council’s ban on walking more than six dogs at once.

The ban was passed by North Somerset Council’s executive on September 6, on the grounds that it was recommended as the maximum amount of dogs someone could control. 

But Hilary Holley said: “I have got more control over my nine than many people have over one.”

Ms Holley lives in North Weston and usually takes her nine dogs — Morgan, Tegan, Scooby, Darcy, Rocky, Mayhem, Remi, Foggy, and Nora — out together to walk them in Weston Big Wood.

She said it would be very disruptive to arrange taking them out in separate groups.

She said: “Professional dog walkers are limited to six dogs purely for insurance purposes because you are walking other people’s dogs.

“But people like me walking my dogs? It’s absolutely ridiculous.

“I don’t really see what jurisdiction they have got to tell me what to do with my own dogs.”

Ms Holley trains her dogs in competitive obedience, in which she has competed at Crufts six times at inter-regional level.

North Somerset Council said that the six dog limit had been supported at consultation, but Ms Holley said that she had not been aware of the consultation.

She added that she had asked other dog owners, and said: “Nobody had heard of it.”

Peter Burden, Ms Holley’s local councillor on North Somerset Council, spoke against the ban when it was approved by the council executive.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the “totally arbitrary” number was seriously affecting a small number of people.

Raising the issue again at full council on September 19, he warned that many people who own large numbers of dogs had not been consulted on the issue, and raised concerns about how the rules affected working animals, such as farmers with sheepdogs.

He added that the council were mistaken to claim that it only affected council-owned land.

The report detailing the policy stated that the ban on walking more than six dogs would be an “area wide order that applies to any land to which the public is entitled or permitted to have access with or without payment.”

Mr Burden said: “If it is a case that it is only council-owned open space, then I don’t believe there is an issue.

“But I believe there is an issue that has been compounded by sticking this off-the-top-of-the-head number six in to seriously affect very few people.”

The council’s executive member for safety in the community, James Clayton, said that he would speak to council officers about how the consultation was run and double check where the ban applied to.