DEFRA’s interference in our sector altered the dynamics of inspections and altered our relationships with local authorities.
Inspections used to be a routine precursor to issuing a boarding licence - But DEFRA’s ill-advised interference has lead licensing officers to believe that their primary function is to close businesses based on the infraction of any of hundreds of new rules.
![DEFRA_64](DEFRA_64.jpg "DEFRA_Unfit for Purpose”)
This occurred because:
- DEFRA didn’t want the job, were not fit to carry out the task and did it badly.
- DEFRA chose to write our regulations without any relevant expertise, practical knowledge or due diligence.
- DEFRA chose to take advice from a charity dominated lobby group with no relevant knowledge of hotels or our sector.
- DEFRA chose to rewrite our regulations without consulting anyone working within our industry.
- DEFRA chose to create a hotel-style 5 star rating system without any scientific backing, analysis or foresight and then introduced it with only two standards covering 99% of all catteries, some of which nullify all other regulations or raise contradictions within the same regulations.
DEFRA decimated a business sector because:
- DEFRA’s entire system relies on the competence of a single local authority officer to conduct an inspection based on a novella sized pamphlet of dysfunctional regulations.
- DEFRA took a relatively benign licensing inspection and turned it into an unworkable and inconsistent post code lottery that lead to the reduction of the UK’s boarding capacity by a third.
- DEFRA made an entire sector subject to the whims of individuals employed by local authorities who were prevented by DEFRA’s regulations from considering expertise, animal welfare or animal care in their assessments.
- DEFRA’s entire system collapses and voids insurance when a council loses its licensing officer, is unable to provide a licensing service because of cuts, declaring bankruptcy or is prioritising spending elsewhere.
DEFRA overestimated the ability of licensing officers to apply the regulations correctly or with any consistency.
- DEFRA didn’t care that the application for licensing inspector isn’t tailored to our sector, doesn’t require any relevant expertise or in fact needs no knowledge of running a businesses.
- DEFRA’s entire licensing system relies on local authorities to employ licensing officers who are dedicated to applying the regulations to the letter regardless of the consequences - and this is often the excuse that Local Authorities use to claim they were not responsible for closing down well run and successful businesses.
- DEFRA don’t care that you can be a 5 star cattery adjudicated by one licensing officer after one inspection and be closed down after another - and they know that their dysfunctional regulations are responsible, they're responsible for providing clarifications because all of the inconsistencies cannot be blamed on the inappropriate employment of people so educationally unfit to understand the regulations or carry out inspections.