Incorrect information on ragwort is very prevalent on this occasion I complained to a law firm that they had a blog entry, written by publicity staff not a lawyer it seemed. I checked with the register of solicitor.
That was in effect giving false legal advice on the law This was a Legal 500 company with an a agricultural department and I don't propose to name them. Legal 500 is one of the two most prestigious independent legal directories in the UK and internationally, alongside Chambers and Partners. They research and rank law firms and individual lawyers across different practice areas based on client feedback and peer review. So this is not some fly-by-night website but a proper legal firm
I will point out the errors with a few short quotes
"A landowner is legally required to prevent ragwort spreading to adjoining land" this is falseFalse. The Weeds Act 1959 Act places no general duty on landowners. It clearly only empowers the Secretary of State to act.
"The Environment Agency can issue a clearance notice" This is false. The Environment Agency has no powers whatsoever under the Weeds Act 1959.
"You may serve them with a formal notice under section 1" False. Private individuals have no power to serve notices. Section 1 gives that legal power solely to the Secretary of State.
"Requiring them to eradicate the ragwort" False. The Act requires prevention of spread, not eradication and this is a significant legal distinction.
"You can then involve your local authority, which has the power to serve its own notice and carry out the work itself" False. Local authorities have no powers under the Weeds Act 1959 whatsoever and it does not even mention them.
"Notifiable weed" False. Ragwort is listed as an injurious weed. Notifiable weed is a different legal category entirely it would mean that you'd have to report the presence of the plant to some kind of authority. No such law exists in the UK.
"The Ragwort Act" Confused but essentially false. No such Act exists.
Every substantive legal claim in that article was wrong. I complained and just 1 hour and 17 minutes later I got a reply from the law company's Senior Compliance Officer. They had just deleted it , no ifs no buts it was gone. I would imagine that they were rather embarrassed by the nonsense.
How does this happen. How does stuff like this appear on even good legal firms websites. Well this kind of thing is typical of members of the British Horse Society or, and it is an overlapping group, readers of horsey magazines. We know that both these are sources of misinformation. The British Horse Society STILL has incorrect information on the law on their website of similar kind to the kind of misinformation that this article contained.
The issue here is always the problem with this hysteria. It is that emotion about animals overrides reasoning and science.
In the ragwort case this is particularly significant because the emotional stakes are really quite genuine people love their horses and are understandably alarmed by anything that might harm them. That entirely understandable concern creates exactly the precise and bad conditions in which misinformation flourishes. I have written before of a horsey world bubble in which nonsense circulates. and here because nobody stops to ask whether the law actually says what everyone says it says we get an article full of nonsensical claims about the law. The Act is four sections long. It would take nobody longer than ten minutes to read. But emotion here about horses and welfare means perhaps that for the writter of this awful article, checking never felt necessary.
It is always very clear that love of animals is really giving people licence to make all sorts of false claims without checking them
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