By Sara Oliver

A PIGEON expert is taking court action over £1,991 he claims he is owed for Trowbridge's scrapped cull.

Glyn Davis claims his Gloucestershire-based firm Tecton is owed the money by Trowbridge Town Council for the work it did on the proposed cull.

Town councillors called him in when they decided the only way to deal with the flocks of pigeons plaguing the town centre was to shoot them during the night.

But the cull was called off following death threats from animal rights protesters.

Now Mr Davis claims the council owes him for the work, but is refusing to pay.

This week he issued a summons against the council in the small claims court, and has instructed a debt recovery firm to recoup the money.

He said: "The town council owes us £594 for the night shoot, and two of our guys spent three and a half days having to deal with the press because the council said it wasn't able to.

"They promised us the work and then the cull didn't go ahead, which wasn't our fault. We did what they asked us to do on the cull, and they asked us to deal with the press. We put our bill in and now they are refusing to pay."

Mr Davis said £2,000 was a lot of money to the business which employs three people.

He said: "We had a verbal agreement with them and it was them who came to us. They have wasted our time and money, and we had to deal with all the bad publicity and the death threats we got. I am not going to let this drop."

Town councillor Jeff Osborn, who led calls for action over the pigeons, said the council did not owe the company a penny.

He said: "There was never a contract with this company, they don't have a leg to stand on. No-one shook hands on this.

"If he wants to go to court, that's up to him. If he wants to claim, he should put a claim in against the animal rights protesters as they were the ones who harassed him."

Town clerk Doug Ross said the council would be fiercely resisting the court action.

He said: "There was no contract with this company. We were only ever at the stage of investigating what could be done."