A FARMER with an appalling history of cruelty to animals has lost an application to lift a lifetime ban on keeping livestock.

A judge at Bradford Crown Court barred David Holmes from making a similar appeal for the next ten years, telling him: “You are effectively banging your head against a brick wall.”

Holmes, who inherited Hainsworth Farm, Silsden, from his father, vowed to fight on, saying: “I will explore every loophole, no matter what. I will leave no stone unturned.”

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said Holmes, who has four lifetime bans under the Animal Welfare Act, would never be deemed a fit and proper person to care for animals.

He had a total of 13 relevant convictions and lost appeals stretching back 20 years, the court heard yesterday.

“There is an appalling background of distressing cruelty to animals,” the judge said.

Describing Holmes as “a vexatious litigant” Judge Durham Hall said he had racked up tens of thousands of pounds in costs over the years and was doing untold damage to himself.

Imran Khan, barrister for Bradford Council, said Holmes was imprisoned for six months and banned for life from keeping animals in 1999. He already had two court fines, for cruelty to a ewe and a ram, when he was convicted of causing unnecessary suffering to cattle.

He went on to notch up further convictions for repeatedly flouting the ban, cruelty to sheep and cattle and illegally trying to move sheep to France.

His final conviction came in 2011 when he was jailed for six months and received a fourth lifetime ban for causing unnecessary suffering to livestock.

On July 4 this year, a Council animal health inspector visited the farm and found the land weed-ridden and liable to flooding. Holmes was “alarmingly vague” about his plans to keep livestock there.

Holmes, who works an an HGV driver, told the court: “I am fed up with driving a lorry at night. I want to go back to farming.”

He said serial killers were treated more fairly.

“If you murdered ten people you would not be treated like that,” he said. “If you kill somebody, life isn’t life. I am now 60 years of age. I will never give in until there’s some daylight.

“I have been bullied all my life and it is continuing. It has just been a vendetta.”

Holmes was ordered to pay £980 legal costs to the Council.

Councillor Abdul Jabar, Bradford Council’s executive member for Neighbourhoods and Community Safety, said: “We are grateful for the judge’s support in this animal welfare case, particularly in preventing Mr Holmes from making any further application to overturn the ban for at least another ten years.”

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