DEFRA claim they wrote their regulations to improve animal welfare, but they achieved the exact opposite of those objectives.
There are five less catteries and kennels in our area than there were in 2019 and not one of the remaining establishments is in any position to expand, manage or accommodate the overflow - so the only people able to provide alternatives are more expensive, less reliable, unlicensed, untrained and uninsured start ups with no overheads and no comeback if something goes wrong.
DEFRA wrote rules and regulations that aren't fit for purpose and can't be applied with any consistency - and while they now refer to our representatives as "stakeholders" they hold regular meetings in order to pretend to be fixing their mistakes - but they refuse to do anything that would be an admission of their own incompetences and refuse to get involved in individual cases or with educating individual councils.
While in some parts of the country there are catteries waiting for licenses and multiple reports of catteries being closed or down-rated by the utterly destructive acts and unfettered stupidity of inexperienced licensing officers.
Putting lazy and incompetent licensing officers in charge of deciding when or how individual catteries function is no longer tenable.
The same licensing officers who are constructively forcing people out of business are also allowing current licenses to run out on existing businesses because they don't appear to have a clue how important it is to have valid insurance - and there are other businesses who are ready to open but who are being prevented from doing so by licensing officers who don't think giving new businesses their license is important either!
Our businesses rely on not making any minor or consequential errors and providing the perfect service for every customer - and DEFRA wrote the wrong regulations for the wrong bureaucrats to enforce with the authority to downgrade our rating for not filling in a form properly - when these same over-zealous illiterate morons don't have the capacity to organise an inspection or get any of the basics right and still face no consequences!
DEFRA has no legitimate claim to govern this sector and in three years have given our industry's representatives the ludicrous New Labour title of "stakeholders" while they pretend to be conducting a "review" into the consequences rather than accepting their own incompetence - their mistakes decimated a decades old UK industry and their only aim appears to be to keep as many regulations in place as possible by refusing to acknowledge that the entire document and every syllable has had widespread negative consequences.
Local authorities do not have the resources to track down the burgeoning mass of rogue and unlicensed operators that were created by DEFRA's inept decisions and subsequent inaction.
Instead of fixing their mistakes DEFRA have been fixated on preventing themselves from being held to account, they tinker around the edges grudgingly forced to fix one line at a time - and nothing changes because all of the licensing officers are too busy avoiding responsibility for misinterpreting the last lot and the decimation of our industry continues.
While everyone pretends that nothing they did was their fault, 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.