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Camp Beagle costs Cambridgeshire police £500,000 – with no end in sight for protest
Police have even given their efforts a name – Operation Vastus
Policing Camp Beagle has to date cost Cambridgeshire police more than half a million pounds. The protest began outside MBR Acres in Wyton, Cambridgeshire, three years ago to lobby for an end to use the issue of beagles bred there for vivisection and research.
Police have even given their efforts a name – Operation Vastus and it was mentioned in the 2022/23 annual report of chief constable Nick Dean.
Tímea Kovács, a photographer working on a documentary photo project with Camp Beagle took these photos of Louise Ryan and her wheelchair protest.
He flagged up the rising costs by mentioning that “across most areas both police officer and staff overtime has overspent, and the operational support unit incurred an overspend on police officer pay and allowances largely due to Operation Vastus ongoing”.
Camp Beagle says the half a million-pound cost came from a Freedom of Information request.
“Fellow activists that have witnessed the police presence at Camp Beagle when the IMPEX death vans leave would know that it is a case of overkill when it comes the police to protester ratio,” it has previously said.
Last year a figure of £450,000 had been quoted as the police costs which Camp Beagle described as “breathtaking although it is eclipsed only by MBR Acres who have spent in excess of £3,000,000 in the High Court in London trying to get rid of Camp Beagle”.
Camp Beagle wishes to close down MBR Acres, a huge beagle breeding factory near Huntingdon, which supplies about 2,000 puppies a year to toxicology testing laboratories across the UK. Above is John Curtin who has previously been banned from the area. PHOTO: Camp Beagle
The FOI in 2023 showed a breakdown of costs in policing the MBR Acres site at Sawtry Way, Wyton, Huntingdon.
A feature of that breakdown includes £175,000 paid out for police overtime.
