Tory grandee calls in police over gay cruisers on his land
A Conservative grandee has asked police to step up patrols around his 2,000-acre estate to prevent gay cruisers meeting for sex.
Sir Beville Stanier, who is a friend of the Queen, complained that Oxfordshire county council should do more to “alleviate the problem”.
The land can be accessed from a layby on the M40.
Sir Beville, 76, told the Oxford Mail that he had spent thousands of pounds clearing undergrowth to make it harder for cruisers to stay out of sight.
He said the council had fixed a chain-link fence broken by cruisers but refused to erect large fences.
‘I really feel Oxfordshire county council should have done something better to alleviate the problem,” he said.
”I know everyone is facing cuts but I thought they would have put up a decent bit of fencing.
However, the council said the chain-link fence was a boundary marker and that it could not spend taxpayers’ money protecting privately-owned land.
PC Paul Gregory, of Thames Valley police, told the newspaper that a “visible police presence” would continue at the site.
He said: ”The layby has been on the police’s patrol plans for years and we’ve been working with the council and Terrence Higgins Trust to try and educate people who meet at the location and encourage them to take their activities elsewhere.”
Aside from the civil wrong of trespass, there are no laws which specifically state that having sex in a public place is illegal but police may charge cruisers with “outraging public decency”.
This is usually reserved for persistent offenders or when activity has been viewed by members of the public.
