Hart District Council carried out unlawful covert surveillance of a family pig farm in Hampshire, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled.

The tribunal found that council officers watched the home of Matthew Silvester and Helen Freeman, who run The Woodland Pig Co at South Warnborough, at night and at dawn in 2023 without the authorisation required by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. It ordered the council to destroy everything the surveillance produced.

However, the tribunal found no evidence of bad faith and awarded no compensation to Mr Silvester and Ms Freeman. It also said the surveillance material was not relied on in High Court proceedings that found the couple in contempt of an injunction over living in a log cabin on site.

‘The council accepts that the surveillance in this instance was not properly authorised,’ a council spokesperson said.

‘The case relates to events of three years ago. We have since updated our internal policy in the light of this and will ensure that any covert surveillance is undertaken with the appropriate authority in future.’

The family disputes that the material played no part in the wider enforcement action that saw the couple given suspended prison sentences. They are applying for permission to appeal and preparing a crime report for Hampshire police.

The Information Commissioner's Office has also upheld their complaint about the council's handling of their data.

‘We were a small family farm selling pork to our local community. The council put an injunction on our land, and then, for months, it watched us. Officers stood in the dark in a neighbour’s field and a neighbour’s bathroom. Neighbours were asked to text them when we were home. A council form was used to log our movements. The council used what it gathered to build its case against us, in the High Court and in the enforcement notice we then had to fight at a planning appeal.

‘Those cases are over. We can’t undo them. But all along, the council told the courts it was acting in the public interest. A tribunal has now ruled its surveillance unlawful, and the Information Commissioner has upheld our complaint that it broke data protection rules.

‘So here is the question. If it was in the public interest to pursue a small family farm, it is surely in the public interest to hold the council to account for breaking the law to do it.’