HORSE owners at Hicks Farm are devastated after being told their animals are no longer welcome.

Bournemouth council plans to transform the site in Throop Road into a community farm and ‘gateway’ to its planned Stour Valley Trail – partly intended to reduce visitor pressure on Hengistbury Head.

There are some 35 horses and ponies on the land, and their owners say they were assured at a public meeting last year that horses would always “be welcome” on the site, and that no change was planned for several years.

However, the Echo understands that the tenant farmer has been told by the borough to leave by next summer, forcing him to evict the horse owners by December this year.

One, Throop resident Anita Simpkins, who has used the stables for 17 years, said she would likely have to put down one of her two horses as a result.

“We basically have nowhere to go. The other girls have been looking at other areas and the nearest are an hour away. There’s a shortage of spaces locally and the charities are full to the brim.

“We were promised last year that the horses would be looked after or relocated within the area.

“One of mine is 24 and not well, no one is going to take him on.”

Beckie Fuidge, who moved to Throop four years ago to be closer to her four horses on site, said: “Just the cost of moving them, we wouldn’t be able to afford it. We would probably have to sell a couple, but they are like family to us.”

The plans would see one of the fields currently used for grazing horses turned into a car park, greatly reducing the viability of the site for keeping the animals due to the lack of seasonal rotation. Throop resident Julie-Anne Houldey said riders and residents felt the borough should look elsewhere to build its community farm and gateway, claiming the fields behind the farmhouse at Hicks Farm flood “four times a year”.

“The council hasn’t even researched the option of re-letting the site to a tenant farmer,” she said.

“A better place for a community farm would be by Cherry Tree Nursery, that site has everything we have here except for the farmhouse.”

And ward councillor John Adams is backing their plea. “The council has to look at other ways to do this, perhaps a smaller development would allow for the continued use of the site by horses. Something that will keep the working relationship, rather than just a museum,” he said.

Cllr Adams said he planned to push the council to commit, before the merger in May, to plans to set up a parish council in the Throop area to give residents more of a say.