Licensed catteries have been inspected for decades and changing the regulations didn’t affect any unlicensed boarding catteries. So what possible purpose did DEFRA think that rewriting the regulations for licensed businesses was going to serve?
DEFRA bureaucrats are delusional on so many levels.
- In DEFRA's view our industry was run so badly that we all had to be subjected to an entire raft of new regulations that were so complex and unworkable that they allowed local authorities to bully and intimidate business owners into leaving this profession and sometimes even entire businesses closed down on the citation of fictional infractions.
- In DEFRA's view the regulations were successful in closing a third of the country's boarding capacity because a third of the country's boarding capacity was treating the animals in their care badly - a total nonsense because if inspections could determine that, then every previous inspection under the old regulations would have detected it.
How many times do you hear ”You have to deal with the situation as it is rather than how you wish it was”?
- We ended up in the grasp of DEFRA because no other department wanted to take responsibility for companion animal hotels or services in the supply chain for tourism - but because the presence of animals was detected, then of course DEFRA vast experience in raw sewage rivers, food insecurity and sheep farm hotels appeared to be the best fit.
- DEFRA imposed a new set of regulations on this sector and didn’t even know if the problems they thought they were addressing even existed or if licensing officers knew what the goal was.
- DEFRA didn’t even realise that the role of Local Authorities is to provide services not prevent businesses from operating, but forced individual licensing officers into the role of being State law enforcement.
- Most of the regulations should be advisories, and the others utterly pointless or non-universal - but everyone has to implement them all to receive a star rating.
- Catteries & kennels don’t need a bureaucratic star-rating to provide the best care for companion animals and without these new regulations the vast majority of licensed establishments had already made a name for themselves based on exactly that.
- We don’t owe the government or bureaucrats any respect because they abandoned our sector during the Covid crisis because bureaucrats misclassified our sector.
- The only time that private businesses need to have anything to do with central government is to pay taxes and the only time we need to hear from a local authority is to issue a licence.