Memorandum submitted by the Pet Care Trust
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Pet Care Trust welcomes legislation that
enhances animal welfare.
2. The Trust supports the proposed prohibition
of sales to persons under 16, something that the Pet Care Charter
has long promoted.
3. We support any moves to make licensing
regimes more flexible and consistent. We support replacing the
current calendar year licence with a perpetual licence that would
require substantive changes to be notified as a variation of the
licence and making the business subject to re-inspection.
4. If licence length were to be varied other
than made perpetual, we suggest it be in relation to a risk assessment
on the nature of the business activity involved. By the same token,
enforcement officers ought to be allowed to vary the frequency
of their visits to licensed premises in light of their own risk
assessment of the individual businesses. The Trust favours a standard
licence to a nationally agreed format suitable for public display.
The Trust supports the step to allow local authorities to appoint
appropriate inspectors.
5. Licence conditions, if subsumed within
Codes of Practice, should include guidelines on stocking densities,
which remains a subjective and emotive issue.
6. The draft Bill needs reinforcing to ensure
that adequate compensation is guaranteed if inappropriate enforcement
action is taken, to allow full and timely reimbursement of costs.
7. The Trust is most concerned that the
regulatory impact assessment has failed to identify that by obliging
a veterinary presence at all inspections, the nation's pet shops
would at a stroke be subject to costs of £450,00 per visit
(now annually and using the RIA's own estimate of 4,500 pet shops
in the country).
8. The Trust welcomes Defra's proposal to
license pet fairs. Their numbers are greatly underestimated in
the regulatory impact assessment.
9. The Trust is dissatisfied with Defra's
recent announcement of RSPCA as approved prosecutor under the
Protection of Animals (Amendment) Act 2000. Our concerns will
be magnified if RSPCA's new status were to be extended to allow
them to enforce the Animal Welfare Bill once enacted.
10. We remain resolutely opposed to anyone
other than the police in an emergency being able to enter any
premises without a warrant.
INTRODUCTION
1. Pet Care Trust is a national charity
working to promote responsible pet ownership. We give high priority
to educating and informing pet owners. We do this both directly
by conducting ad hoc research and promoting the benefits of pet
ownership (see report "Pets Are Good For You" sent to
all GP surgeries last year) and also by promoting high standards
of education among the pet service industry, informing and facilitating
their work to support and inform the general pet owning public.
We can provide a list on request of educational initiatives run
and managed by the Trust and examples of our publications as referred
to in Annex C of Defra's launch publication on the draft Bill.
2. The Trust has in membership some 1,200
businesses, overwhelmingly small and medium sized enterprises,
including retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, kennels and catteries,
dog groomers, hydro-therapists, dog walkers, pet sitters and associated
professional services including animal care colleges, all servicing
the pet owning public.
VIEWS ON
THE DRAFT
BILL
3. Pet Care Trust welcomes legislation that
enhances animal welfare. Much of the bill appears practical, enforceable,
proportionate and not unfairly burdensome in terms of cost or
administration for the pet service industry.
4. The Trust welcomes the move to allow
commercial pet fairs under licence, which should promote professional
standards, responsible behaviour and make them more obviously
visible for enforcers to monitor. This was a result of some very
constructive participation in the DEFRA working group of various
bodies, notably the RSPCA.
5. The Trust supports the proposed prohibition
of sales to persons under 16, something that the Pet Care Trust
Charter has long promoted.
6. We support any move to make licensing
regimes more flexible and consistent. We commend to you the following
ideas based on the work of the Pet Vending Working Party convened
by Defra.
7. Replace the current calendar year licence
with a perpetual licence that would require substantive changes,
such as change of business ownership or an extension of the taxa
being offered for sale, to be notified as a variation of the licence
and making the business subject to re-inspection.
8. Improve the competency of those licensing
and inspecting pet shops by a number of measures ranging from
including the activity in the Comprehensive Performance Assessment
of local authority activity and allowing authorities to subcontract
the inspection process to enterprises with more relevant expertise
(perhaps including other local authorities) and drawing up a list
of experts who may or may not be veterinary qualified to help
licensing authority staff on a justifiably needed basis.
9. Promote a standard licence to a nationally
agreed format suitable for public display and allowing for contact
details of the local authority department issuing the licence
to be included.
10. Licence conditions, if subsumed within
Codes of Practice, should include guidelines on stocking densities,
which remain a subjective and emotive issue.
11. The competence of the licensee to be
demonstrable, in most cases by formal qualification or proof of
working towards same.
12. The Bill should apply to all businesses
involved in the trade in companion animals including via the internet.
To reflect the shift in retail culture, it will be more appropriate
to call a pet shop licence a pet vendor's licence.
13. The Trust has some 300 dog groomers
in membership, many of whom boast City and Guilds 7750 qualifications
and some the advanced qualifications. There has been long and
active debate on the potential benefits and disbenefits of groomers'
licences or registration. Given that groomers do not keep animals
as such, merely tend to them for restricted periods of time and
usually in open plan conditions for all to see (including the
pet owner), licensing would seem inappropriate and there is no
call for such, as the regulatory impact assessment confirms.
14. We can imagine that a registration scheme
might prove useful for a local authority to be aware of businesses
operating in its area in case of complaint. Such registration
would need to apply to all types of grooming business such as
those operating in shops, their own homes, customers' homes, from
vans, to meet customers' needs. Such a register might be of some
use in identifying rogue business (one that failed to register
would identify itself as at best needing help and at worst investigation
by other government agencies, such as Inland Revenue). Any such
registration should be without charge.
15. With the launch of our grooming foundation
course next year to underpin education and training within C &
G 7750 and the C & G advanced grooming qualification, the
Trust continues to develop the service industry to a professional,
skilled and valued one. Anything more stringent than registration
and certainly the notion of a licensing system requiring formal
qualifications would trigger an adverse reaction on the part of
unqualified groomers who may go underground, unable to get insurance
and boosting the black economy.
16. Regarding clause 11, the draft appears
strong on recovering enforcement and legal costs but short on
ensuring adequate compensation if inappropriate action is taken
(see clause 29 and paragraph 126 of explanatory notes). As ever
in these matters, a proper balance of rights and responsibilities
needs to be struck so that businesses unfairly challenged may
receive full and timely reimbursement of costs.
17. Clause 44. The Trust supports this step
to allow local authorities to appoint appropriate inspectors,
which would allow them to draw on a national list of expert persons
from a whole range of backgrounds: public and private sector,
veterinary and non-veterinary.
18. Conversely, the Trust is most concerned
at the potential on-cost for pet shops (and boarding kennels and
catteries) to have an obligatory veterinary presence at all inspections.
For most businesses, this would be unnecessary, a classic gold-plating
overkill. However, it is right and proper that an enforcement
officer should call on the services of a vet where conditions
require that expertise; it is unjustifiable in the routine. This
proposal has been slipped in on the final page of the launch document
and has not been costed in the regulatory impact assessment, merely
mentioned at the very end of Annex C. With veterinary fees ranging
between £100 to £400 per visit, these extra costs would
scarcely be off-set by licences being issued, say, every 18 months.
Even if a minimum £100 vet charge were incurred annually,
this would add at a stroke £70,000 to the Trust's 700 pet
shop members' regulatory burden and a massive £450,000 to
sector as a whole.
19. Defra's estimate of the number of pet
fairs should be increased some three or four fold, the Trust believes.
Cage and Aviary Birds advertises some 10 to 15 bird fairs each
week (these are only the advertised ones). Additionally there
are a great many small mammal fairs, fish fairs and reptile/amphibian
fairs.
20. To shift the traditional 12 month licence
to an 18 month duration would, the Trust believes, create confusion,
with licences being re-issued in January one year and July the
next. Local authorities would no doubt have a valuable contribution
to make on this point as the administrators.
21. If licence length is to be varied other
than made perpetual (see 7 above), we suggest it be in relation
to a risk assessment on the nature of the establishment involved.
For example, establishments that are by definition more likely
to be caring for injured and sick animals are likely to be in
need of greater regularity of veterinary inspection than pet shops
whose trade depends on their livestock being healthy.
22. By the same token, enforcement officers
ought to be able to vary the frequency of their visits to licensed
premises in light of their own risk assessment of the individual
business, with a known, informed and highly professional establishment
requiring fewer visits than one run by someone struggling to keep
abreast of the latest and best animal care practices, for example.
This would fit neatly into the logic of having a perpetual licence
supported by an appropriate frequency of inspection visits coupled
with accompanying expert, when appropriate to the business.
23. In adjunct to its work on the Bill,
the Select Committee should be aware of our alarm at the potential
for the RSPCA to have its new approved prosecutor status, due
to take effect from 1 September, extended under the Animal Welfare
Bill. The Trust has registered its dissatisfaction at Defra's
low key announcement of RSPCA as approved prosecutor under the
Protection of Animals (Amendment) Act 2000 with Animal Health
and Welfare Minister, Ben Bradshaw MP. This contentious move,
given RSPCA's stated opposition to the sale of animals in pet
shops, has triggered concerns among that part of our membership
that would be magnified if RSPCA's new status were to be the first
step towards Defra extending RSPCA powers in due course to allow
them to enforce animal welfare more generally under the Animal
Welfare Bill. A copy of our letter to Animal Health and Welfare
Minister, Ben Bradshaw MP setting out our views is attached at
Appendix 1 [not printed].
24. Finally, while the Animal Welfare Bill
has nothing directly to do with wildlife trade policy, which is
administered by Defra's Global Wildlife Division not the Animal
Welfare Division, we feel it is worthwhile signalling the Trust's
appreciation of Defra's work for the sustainable trade in wildlife.
25. The UK's signature of the Convention
on Biological Diversity obliges the UK to support sustainable
trade in wildlife from those developing countries that choose
to sustainably utilise their wildlife for the benefit of impoverished
local people. The UK receives far more criticism for not supporting
this vigorously enough than it ever does for supporting wildlife
trade.
26. We at the Pet Care Trust support the
world's governments, CITES, the major international conservation
organisations, Defra and the stated policies of both the Labour
part and the Conservative party in supporting the principle of
sustainable trade in wildlife. In many cases, this is both the
most appropriate way of ensuring the long-term survival of species
and their ecosystems and also significantly alleviates poverty
amongst some of the world's poorest people. See Appendix 2 for
a fuller appreciation of our views [not printed].
25 August 2004
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