There’s a theory about how low level crime evolves called “the broken window”.
The broken window posits that if the first crime you commit is not prosecuted then the perpetrator commits more and greater crimes because while society suffers incremental damage there are no financial or personal consequences for the criminal.
It’s clear that no one in their right minds could have written these new regulations without having a history of laziness, corner cutting and incompetence - and the "broken window" argument is that it would be simply impossible for any institution to reach this level of incompetence if any bureaucrat at DEFRA had ever faced accountability.
The crux of the problem is that DEFRA overstepped their bounds, wrote regulations that were not reviewed by any competent official and then foisted them onto a sector who were never consulted and had functioned perfectly well for decades without any bureaucratic interference.
In 2019, DEFRA decided that they could restructure and run all catteries and kennels by diktat, and then enlisted the help of another of the country’s worst type of unelected, dysfunctional and disreputable institutions to enforce their impositions; Local authorities.
To all intents and purposes, local authorities have no universal approach to any problem, no standard procedure to resolve mistakes and they turn every process into a chaotic dysfunctional mess of box-ticking and arse covering - and these are the people that DEFRA chose to enforce their appallingly nonsensical, unworkable and ill-conceived regulations.
It’s no surprise that local authorities have to immunise themselves against responsibility - local authorities have developed an impenetrable wall of lies and bullshit to cover up their inadequacy and avoid facing any consequences for any decision or action they ever make.
And here the broken widow theory is proven relevant again; because local authorities could not be in the state they are now without multi-generational decisions to break every window they’ve ever seen.