A court has heard how a woman who rescues foxes ruined her neighbours’ vegetable patch because of the “overpowering” smell.
Juliet Auburn has cared for sick and injured animals for years with particular expertise in foxes and has even built a fox enclosure made up of several pens.
The 60-year-old of Grayshott, Hampshire has an acre of garden space that is bordered by woodland where she looks after as many as 16 foxes at any one time.
However, the court how the issues arose over Auburn’s fox pens, which were two meters away from a semi-dethatched bungalow owned by neighbour Frank Gates and his wife.
Basingstoke Magistrate’s Court heard the smell was ‘revolting’
PA
The neighbours claimed the stench was so bad that the vegetable patch on their £1million property had become overgrown with weeds because they could not bear to be outside and tend to it.
Environmental health officers who investigated the smell told the court hearing that it was “revolting” and “omnipresent.”
Auburn was eventually taken to Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court by East Hampshire District Council, where it was alleged that she breached an abatement notice given to her in 2017, after previous complaints.
The court heard she did was able to successfully neutralise the smell but in March 2023 the council launched another investigation after fresh complaints from Gates over the stench of urine.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
East Hampshire District Council took Auburn to court over the foxes
PA
Prosecutor Edward Elton told the court: “On May 26 2017, East Hampshire District Council received a complaint from Mr and Mrs Gates that they were being disturbed by a smell. The smell was overwhelming and preventing them from enjoying their garden. An abatement notice was issued.”
Giving evidence, council’s pollution team leader Charlotte Adcock, who visited the Gates’ property on May 3, 2023, said: “When I opened the car door I was hit by a very strong smell which I know to be fox urine. I have a dog who likes to roll in fox poo, I find it quite offensive.
“If I didn’t have to do the visit I would have got back in my car and left. Mr and Mrs Gates have a patio at the rear of their bungalow, a vegetable patch, a greenhouse they like to use. I decided I wouldn’t want to use the patio at all, it was just revolting. It was overpowering, sickly sweet, it made me feel ill, I had to leave and I could hear the foxes crying too.
“It was my view that on that day the smell was so omnipresent I wouldn’t be able to use my garden, it was a breach of the notice.
“The vegetable patch was full of weeds, I wouldn’t want to garden in that garden.”
Barrister Angelica Rokad, defending Auburn, told the court the council felt “pressured” to enforce the notice.
She added that “informal” ways of handling the situation were not explored, and that Gates had not actually lived at the property for “substantial periods” of 2023 and asked the council worker if this had been taken into account in the investigation.
District Judge Stephen Apted found Auburn not guilty of the breach.