WITH the announcement of autumn animal movements last week, the county council is establishing a new licensing centre to cope with the expected demand.

"We expect the majority of licence requests will be for sheep, which start on October 1," said North Yorkshire's head of trading standards and regulatory services Stuart Pudney. "It is anticipated that there will be 10,000 extra licence applications, in addition to the licences for slaughter we are already issuing.

"Since the existing centre in County Hall in Northallerton was set up in March, farmers have made 210,000 calls to the licensing helpline and over 26,000 individual licences have been issued."

The new movement rules go into effect on September 24 for cattle and pigs and Mr Pudney hopes to have everything in place by then in the new licensing centre on the Standard Way Industrial Estate in Northallerton. However he said last week: "We are still awaiting the new computer program from DEFRA together with full details of how the scheme will operate and copies of application forms, licences and conditions. If there are a couples of days delay, then I would ask that farmers please bear with us."

When new address, telephone number, fax, etc, for the new centre are available, the county will announce them. Staff hoped to move into the new centre on Wednesday or Thursday of this week (Sept 19-20).

At present, about 20 people work on the issuing of licences but it is expected that additional hiring - of up to 15 more people - will take place at the end of the month.

Updated: 08:45 Thursday, September 20, 2001