When DEFRA received all the negative reports from our sector DEFRA calculated that they only had to delay, delay, delay for three inspection cycles and the problem would solve itself.
All DEFRA have done is conduct Zoom Calls.
DEFRA were right. Most of the people negatively impacted by the new demands were forced out of business or have left our sector don’t need a voice.
But there’s a pernicious and false assumption that the standard of welfare has been raised because the only businesses that closed were all below par establishments.
However, the data and the anecdotal evidence suggests that most businesses closed, not through the identification of welfare issues, but a combination of the failure of local authorities to adequately support the sector throughout Covid, DEFRA's unsubstantiated demands for immediate financial inputs and being sick of being insulted by low quality licensing officers during inspections.
However, the “unintended consequences” of DEFRA refusing to rectify their mistakes meant that our sector was partially replaced with unregulated and unlicensed dog and cat sitters - and no cat-sitter or dog walker has to provide 24 hour care, adhere to any regulations and only need to turn up for a maximum of 30 minutes to fulfil their contract leaving the animals to solitary confinement 164 hours out of every 168 hours in a week.