”DEFRA is no more fit to rule hotels for cats and tourism than the education department is qualified to rule schools & teachers”.
In January a headteacher’s suicide was put down to the intolerable external pressure after more than three decades of service over an Ofsted inspector’s single word downrating of her school.
DEFRA introduced a formula driven rating system that has led local authority inspectors to award unjustifiable ratings to businesses who have served their communities for decades which has caused unecessary stress and psychological harm across our sector.
Any inspection should be carried out by competent professionals.
Ofsted’s judgements are subjective and have only five categories to determine and their one word conclusions still manage to misinform the public and harms the schools.
DEFRA’s inspections are carried out using flawed and contradictory regulations in combination with barely literate local authority licensing officers - and their conclusions are broadcast to the public without any context or meaning.
What is the purpose of an inspection?
DEFRA set out to create regulations that they claim were written to drive up animal welfare in the UK and Ofsted claim to be able to drive up education standards through inspections.
But both of these futile government mandated exercises only exist to justify the department’s existence, are costly to everyone else and inspections have caused people to leave both professions at unsustainable rates.
Government departments have their budgets cut and never perform better.
Yet, while the government has been cutting all school budgets, Ofsted demands better results from less resources.
While DEFRA have demanded the end of downtime, an increase in time wasted on pointless paperwork and minimum staffing levels while working with a reduced income.
The country and every industry and sector deserves to be governed by people who have the relevant qualifications, knowledge and skills to do the job they’re being paid to do.
Teachers are required to have multiple relevant qualifications and yet Education Minister after Education Minister has not been required to have any teaching qualifications and no experience in the education system.
No one involved in writing cattery or kennels regulations had any knowledge, skills or talent to complete a job that would have been better and more effectively written by understanding the sector or consulting with any small business owner.
- DEFRA have no experience and none of the skills required to run or manage a cattery.
- DEFRA relied on lobbyists posing as advisors for information.
- DEFRA have changed ministers so often no one can be found to take responsibility.
The bottom line is that the incompetence, arrogance and entitlement that drives these government departments is unacceptable.
Three years after this disastrous interference, DEFRA can’t even produce evidence to illustrate that any of the changes they made were required, and all the evidence shows that their ill-judged and unworkable regulations have done nothing but reduce the quality of animal welfare across the country.