DEFRA bureaucrats cannot hide their failure behind or blame their failures on external forces because the regulations predate any of the effects felt from Ukraine, Covid or Brexit
The spike in closures begin after DEFRA turned the UK’s Catteries and Kennels sector into a franchise and coincides with local authority licensing officers assuming the authority to launch law enforcement operations against us.
After DEFRA were made aware of the problems, if a performance management process had been introduced to track the work of DEFRA bureaucrats it would produce a flat-line because DEFRA bureaucrats have done nothing for over three years.
The regulations were written before the negative impact of Brexit came into affect. Before Putin’s troops had moved from their 2014 positions. Before Ukraine’s food and wood production had been interrupted and thoughts of an accidental release of a global pandemic was nothing more than a theoretical bio-weapon in military game theory.
Since 2016 everything that has gone wrong has been blamed on the big three. But Brexit, Ukraine and Covid can’t be cited in anyone's defense because DEFRA's failure to fix their disastrous and unworkable regulations was a choice independent of any outside infuence.
- The masses of inexperienced or low-quality bureaucrats to deal with the Brexit withdrawal agreement are not responsible.
- None of the local authority problems can be blamed on blockades of Odessa, mined fields or un-drilled Ukrainian wheat seed.
- Local authorities can’t blame working from home during Covid because they carried out inspections in person.
- Nothing can be blamed on being overworked or understaffed because DEFRA had plenty of staff on hand to arrange to surround our coastline and pour raw sewage into our rivers.
- Not even the excuse that the country went through multiple cabinet ministers and the country went through three prime ministers in a matter of weeks gives them an excuse because the people who wrote these regulations had no intention of telling anyone what they’d done to our sector.
Altering the terms and conditions for existing businesses to obtain a licence was devised and driven by bureaucrats.
- The entire regulatory framework was written by incompetent and unelected London-based bureaucrats who didn’t think it was necessary to consult with anyone working in our industry.
- The red tape introduced by Brexit in 2022 impacted our economy. A third of small businesses stopped dealing with the EU by 2021 because of red tape. But in 2019 DEFRA had deliberately increased the amount of new red tape across our industry.
- Our outgoings have outstripped our incomes during the cost of business crisis and DEFRA’s insane ideas about our sector removed what little disposable incomes that small businesses create.
- All of this occurred prior to the cost of living crisis and now cat food and energy costs have gone through the roof.
Reject, Reform, Rewrite
The regulatory framework meets none of DEFRA’s stated goals and until the rules produce a benefit to the public, the animals we care for and the people working in this industry they have no validity.