In 2019 DEFRA chose to impose a raft of contradictory, ill-informed and unworkable reforms on our sector but have not been able to produce any data or show that there is a correlation between the regulations and what they aimed to fix.
Within 3 years a third of the country’s boarding capacity had disappeared and had been replaced by a deluge of unlicensed and unregulated businesses advertising through social media.
Under the unique style of DEFRA's regulations, if DEFRA had to meet any social, moral or ethical requirements they’d be closed down by local authorities immediately.
And based on the same style of regulations DEFRA bureaucrats should have to answer the question, are they stupid or delusional at the higher standard or without any professional standards at the lower standard or constantly throwing a monster raving loony party instead of working?
DEFRA have refused to accept their culpability, the direct causality and have done nothing to fix their mistakes.
- DEFRA produced regulatory documents that were not proof read and no impact assessments were carried out.
- DEFRA’s legislation suggest a lack of seriousness because no one can write regulations for a sector they had no contact with.
- DEFRA’s legislation suggests that bureaucrats are not aware that lacking any experience or knowledge is a barrier to almost any kind of work.
- DEFRA imposed terms and conditions without any practical knowledge of the industry or the people working in it.
- DEFRA wrote all of our animal welfare regulations by padding out an unworkable restaurant style rating system when the only factor that matters to our customers is quality of care.
In response to this bureaucratic lunacy, various groups and forums were set up to discuss how we survive as subjects of DEFRA.
- It became clear fom the comments all over the country that the same regulations were not being applied equally and how the bad attitudes of local authoritarians were applying these new conditions and directives without any regard for consequences.
- DEFRA created a post code lottery where some businesses received 5 stars without meeting the higher standard for every metric and some catteries and kennels were closed down because licensing officers decided they could interpret any rule to mean anything or just make up regulations.
- Local authoritarians have repeatedly shown themselves to be be incapable of carrying out inspections, have no applicable experience, skills or educational standard to run a business but assumed the authority to randomly apply DEFRA’s ill-conceived and nonsensical regulations to tell us how to run ours.
The mistaken belief is that any of this is defensible.
- DEFRA wrote regulations that allows any licensing officer to unilaterally order a perfectly run boarding establishment to cease trading.
- Our sector has to take legal advice on every insane decision because Local Authorities do not want to be held responsible for their decisions and do not want to provide an appeals process.
- And this is compounded because Local Authorities will not reverse indefensible decisions out of fear that a reversal is an admission of liability and grounds for legal action and compensation.
All of these people are Monster Raving Lunatics. We just need to have a public record confirming it.