Part 9 - DEFRA's Regulations
Part B – Specific conditions: providing boarding in catteries for cats (schedule 4, part 1 of the regulations)
There must be a correlation between having no real-life experiences, being ill-educated and deficient in critical thought and acting like irresponsible brain-dead sociopaths and wanting to be a bureaucrat since there don’t seem to be any other redeeming qualities or requirements.
Buraucracy has failed this nation.
No DEFRA bureaucrat is equipped for the rigours of service, being responsible for decisions, dealing with people or caring for companion animals.
Every part of this section was written by bureaucrats who’ve never worked in this industry and would not survive either the training, attention to detail or the level of responsibility required - and they were written for local authority employees who’ve never worked in this industry and would not survive either the training, attention to detail or the level of responsibility required.
But what makes everyone angry and what did the most damage wasn’t the disproportionate harm DEFRA inflicted on our industry through their ignorance, but that the vast majority was avoidable if DEFRA officials hadn’t wallowed in a 5 year delusion that it wasn’t their job to take immediate action when it all went wrong.
DEFRA’s overreach and misconduct can be summed up as this:
Making up regulations that closed businesses and reduced boarding capacity across the country because no one involved knew anything about this sector.
Being informed that it was all going wrong, but refusing to help local authorities to recognise or fix their mistakes and refusing to recognise their own mistakes and fixing them.
Covering their mistakes up by pretending the first two didn’t happen and altering a word or two every year or so and pretending that local authorities were responsible.
To write coherent regulations, you’d need to consult with people who’ve had years of practical experience in different animal welfare situations and preferably in different countries - DEFRA had no experience in any relevant sector, had no concept of the purpose aims or practicalities involved in running any business, never mind a basic grasp of hotel management - and then took advice from the Canine & Feline Sector Group who are in fact a group of self-important lobbyists with no real world experience in any relevant sector.
DEFRA used the following section to redefine their stupidity by refining regulations that they already knew were unfit for purpose.
DEFRA wrote regulations that reduced productivity, introduced inefficiency, reduced profits and raised the cost to the public of taking holidays while providing no advantage to the animals we board.
DEFRA introduced more waste and inefficiency because for DEFRA, the answer to every problem is not to solve any real problems, but to imagine problems to create solutions for and create more problems that they didn’t foresee.
Reproducing reams of redundant and inappropriate paperwork helps no one and introduces inaccuracies - and the fact that it’s all available elsewhere only underlines DEFRA’s absolute lack of fitness for work, hatred of productivity and lack of experience in any commercial or professional work environment.
2.0 Suitable environment
Every hotel from an Osaka capsule to a sprawling suite in a country manor is a different size and different price and yet they are all fit to house a single human of any size for a limited or extended time.
Likewise, every cattery pen ever built is large enough to house any cat and the size of cats varies across a greater range than humans …. and DEFRA introduced a minimum size that not all cats are comfortable in and is too large for the average cat and then reduced the size with a secondary requirement to fill that space with igloos, boxes and scratching posts that compromises hygiene, efficiency and reduces surface space.
DEFRA introduced ‘minimum size’ regulations without any scientific backing, thought for the consequences or any informed consultation. This one terminally flawed regulation allowed local authorities to threaten and abuse business owners, close businesses without compensating the public for lost holidays, refuse licenses and demand rebuilds based on the imaginary figures introduced by DEFRA - all because of DEFRA’s incompetence they were applied retrospectively, without recognition of grandfather rights, grace periods, timeframes or financial support.
This is particularly disturbing because while DEFRA are not a suitable vehicle to be involved in writing rules for any private industry, they are spectacularly ill-suited to manage their core responsibilities and have no relavent knowledge of the tourism industry.
No company has ever been able to construct or sell any unit with future regulations or restrictions in mind.
Many bespoke cat accommodations were fitted into the available space during the planning phase and licensed under the regulations in force at the time - and nobody has the foresight to think that one day a sub-standard failed department like DEFRA would be given the opportunity to make radical changes for an industry they knew nothing about.
DEFRA didn’t have the collective sense to foresee the consequences of not basing their changes on a range of figures reflecting the size of cats, but chose absolutes based on nothing at all.
If anyone in our sector acted with the speed of or with a fraction of the incompetence and continual irresponsible misconduct as DEFRA, we’d be on the wrong end of a social media barrage, newspaper stories and be out of business within the month.
But what sickens everyone in this sector is that people who had dedicated their lives to caring for companion animals were driven out of this sector not because they had caused any harm or did not provide a high level of care, but that after working 7 days a week while earning less than the minimum wage for the past 20 years they couldn’t afford to remodel the buildings to suit a fantasy world created by DEFRA.
DERFRA tried to shut the barn door after the horse bolted but DEFRA opened it in the first place - and this gives no comfort to anyone forced to close down because DEFRA dug themselves a hole that they refused to climb out of.
Addendum, September 2024: It’s not the government who can’t afford DEFRA, departments like DEFRA receive massive funds and still fuck up everything they touch and are one of the many reasons that there’s not enough money left in the treasury to pay ten million pensioners a winter fuel payment.
There is no excuse for the 5 years of delays in fixing their mess
But rather than apologise to the country and all former business owners or offer compensation DEFRA offered an insulting deflection - and the single line added to the end of 2.6 admitting their role in having contributed to the unnecessary destruction of a much appreciated community based public service industry is no compensation to anyone.
This discussion of DEFRA's regulation fiasco is covered in ten short articles:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6,
Part 7,
Part 8,
Part 9,
Part 10