DEFRA is a worthless, dangerous and unaccountable institution
Instead of fixing their mistakes DEFRA are entirely fixated on preventing themselves from being held to account. DEFRA pretends that nothing they did was their fault, when absolutely everything from the brief to their work and every syllable codified was their fault. For over a year DEFRA has been tinkering around the edges grudgingly forced to fix one line at a time. And the decimation of our industry continues because DEFRA wont instruct local authorities on how to resolve matters and licensing officers are too busy avoiding responsibility for misinterpreting or making up the regulations.
What DEFRA doesn't know ...
In the real world our customers do not care if our sector is inspected or rated. No one has ever asked if we were licensed. No one cares about government ratings and no one can make any sense of the regulations or how the ratings were determined.
The good or bad reputation of any kennels and catteries is decided by our customers - They don't neeed or want advice from any remote and bureaucratic source on where to place their favourite family member - we hold at least 50 public viewings a year and all our customers care about is will their cat be happy here while they're away.