DEVON-BASED Team GB equestrian competitor Anna Ross has had a court case against her dropped after the council that lodged it offered no evidence.

Ms Ross, an international dressage rider, was taken to court by Mid Devon District Council over a planning dispute.

It alleged she hadn’t complied with a “breach of condition” notice and had she been found guilty, she could have been fined and subject to an injunction.

But when the case came up in front of a district judge at a magistrates’ court in January, the council offered no evidence.

It has now been criticised by Ms Ross who says a conviction would have prevented her competing in some countries and would have been revealed in any disclosure and barring service check, preventing her work with children and people with additional needs.

The district council’s website says its fines for such breaches are £1,000, but the Sentencing Council shows they could be as high as £2,500, and in some cases unlimited.

“The case has left me with a with a profound sense of unease that a public authority can leverage the criminal system in an arbitrary way to target an individual over a series of months and simply withdraw, when they remember that the case had no merit in the first place,” Ms Ross said.

“The district council’s mandate is to ‘work collaboratively for a positive outcome with all parties’. This could not be further from what I have experienced. Changes must be implemented to ensure that the taxpayer is protected in future.

“In my view, I have not been treated equitably.”

The dispute relates to work on a bank that needed to be made less steep as part of a wider application to create a hardstanding area for a muck store and additional parking.

Mid Devon wanted work on the 85-degree bank completed three months after it gave permission in June 2023, which representatives for Ms Ross called “punitive” and “unworkable”.

She did not complete the work in time. However, Ms Ross said a condition of the planning consent meant a drainage report had to be approved by the council before work on the bank could be finished.

Representatives for Ms Ross said this meant the council was asking her “to complete something that she couldn’t do until they approved the drainage strategy”.

They said she had been in regular contact with the council, updating it with progress, and planning staff had been on site visits.

Ms Ross claims the work was partially complete when she was served the notice, but the council didn’t deliver it to her in person or by a nominated representative, as required.

Ms Ross’s representatives say that during the time she was meant to finish the work, Devon experienced the “wettest weather on record for almost 200 years”, meaning it could not be completed safely.

They say Health and Safety Executive evaluation sheets suggest conditions were unsafe for much of the winter between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024.

Emmilynne Berkeley-Hann, who works for Ms Ross, said that on the day of the case, “Anna walks into the court, with her barrister, scared about what might happen, and then the council offered no evidence….meaning that Anna was acquitted.”

Ms Berkeley-Hann added that Ms Ross had applied to recover her costs, which were just over £9,500 “for a case that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place” and that this was applied for from public funds.

A spokesperson for Mid Devon District Council said it had issued a court summons against Anna Ross over a planning dispute.

“While the court proceedings on January 30, 2025 brought an end to that prosecution for a planning condition breach, the council is unable to comment further on this site given that investigations are continuing and to do so may prejudice future action.”

It is understood it was the third time Mid Devon District Council had taken a planning matter to court against an individual in eight years.

Bradley Gerrard