Our AGM is on Wednesday 16 March, 7.30 pm, in the back room at The Bell. The agenda will be shared in due course.

A wonderful afternoon was had at our annual Christmas Pawty on Sunday 13 December. Thank you to Ye Olde Rose and Crown for hosting, and to Laura Anderson for the photos. Merry Christmas furry and human members alike.

Last Thursday, three members of the WF4Dogs committee met with Scott Cartwright of the Dog Enforcement Team, Mandy Thompson and Cllr Clyde Loakes at the town hall. We covered a lot, and these are our notes from the meeting plus requests to our members.

Stray dogs register
– Scott will now email us fortnightly with the outcome for each stray dog found who appears in the register at Sycamore House and/or on Twitter.
– We will continue to push for the register of found dogs and their outcomes to be fully online.
Rehoming
– The council only uses All Dogs Matter to rehome stray dogs not reunited with their owners. We would like to see the current number of dogs put to sleep because unsuitable for rehoming reduced. One way of doing this would be to have a second rescue charity on board. Scott is going to look into this.
Reducing Strays PTS
– We got recent figures about dogs reunited, rehomed and PTS by making an FOI request. The council has now offered to send us these figures every April for the previous year. We hope to see the reunited and rehomed figures increased, and the PTS figures significantly decreased over the coming years. The two points directly above would contribute to this.
Out of hours calls
– We raised again the ongoing issue that anyone calling the DET out of hours doesn’t get a response. The council maintains that calls should get through.
– If you are a dog owner can only get the switchboard,, saying they will leave a message for the DET (or that you should call back in the morning), please obtain a ‘T number’ from the switchboard and let us know. The ‘T number’ will allow us to follow up on your behalf, and will allow the council to find out what is happening.
Fencing in parks
– Jubilee Park – they have said that the major works will be going on in the park for 12 to 18 months and that no fencing is budgeted. However, there will be heavy planting put in at the end of the works which might resolve the fencing problem, it will be a matter of lobbying at that point. If you use Jubilee Park, do let us know how this progresses.
– Lloyd Park – apparently the fenced area wasn’t intended to remain after the last DCO’s, but that there was no budget to take the fencing down. There is no budget to put fencing up either, but Cllr Loakes has said he will get an initial cost for a high metal mesh fence.
Microchipping
– Apparently all dogs without chips, or with chips without details, are given fully registered up-to-date chips before being reunited with their owners. If you are aware this hasn’t been carried out in a specific instance, do let us know.
– They say all dead dogs found are scanned for microchips. Again, if you are aware this hasn’t been carried out in a specific instance, do let us know.
– Also, there is currently free microchipping being offered by the DET ahead of the law change next year. Contact them for this service.
Other notes
– DET has no concerns about performance in the borough following the start of the Met contract. Staff are regularly in the parks, of course they can’t be there 24 hours a day.
– The response time for a dangerous dog incident in progress is one hour. If the report isn’t urgent then the response time is five days.
– Our next meeting with the council will be in April 2016.
As ever, if you are having problems with any council/dog enforcement team issue do let us know (with all the specifics) and we’ll follow up wherever we can.

Save the date!

The next Christmas Pawty is on Sunday 13 December. Watch this space (or Facebook) for further details.