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Welcome to Houndmistress Council Website Comparisons If you look at the Council information area of the site, you'll see that one of the things I've done for each local authority in Wales is to provide a website checklist. When I was doing my research for the site, I was struck by the variation between local authority sites and in general by the lack of information that you would think would be essential. For a look at the blank checklist, click here (opens in new window). When I was compiling the checklist, I thought about what should be there. Obviously, basic information on what to do if you lose your dog, or find a dog, especially out of hours when dog wardens may not be working. Dead dogs - do they scan them? Can you report finding a dead dog easily? Adopting a dog - thousands of dogs each year are rehomed by Welsh Councils so you'd think they would want to make this process easy and user friendly. Dog Control Orders - if you're visiting a popular holiday destination with a dog, knowing where you can take them (beaches, country parks) can make a big difference. Microchipping and neutering information - for services who manage stray and unwanted dogs, these are key issues. Events and information on training, local charities etc. Taking your dog to training classes is shown to have a protective effect when studies are done on rescue dogs and the factors that affect relinquishment. Given this well established fact, and the anti social effects of badly trained dogs, links to classes would surely be a good idea. Local charities, as well as taking many of the dogs from pounds and rehoming them, are also valuable sources of free information, advice and support and run many free and low cost events for dog owners and their families. These include regular walks, fun dog shows, quizzes, cake sales, all sorts of activities. WG have produced an excellent series of booklets on care of several animals including dogs, horses and rabbits, as part of their commitment to the animal welfare agenda. Links to these excellent publications would be a terrific (and free) addition to any Council or charity website. Click here to visit the download site and view the Code for dogs (which is available in both English and Welsh). After completing each individual Council's checklist, I decided to put the results together to see what conclusions could be drawn. I set up a spreadsheet on Excel and put the result from each Council into a scored table. I omitted the point about live consultations on DCOs since these may only occur infrequently. The absence of content scored zero, its presence scored one and if there was very limited content, I gave it a half. There are a total of twenty five different elements, and I've marked them for each of the twenty two Welsh Councils.
The clear leader, with a high score of 17 is Cardiff. Their website is excellent and contains a great deal of useful information, plus good links to the very active Friends Group who support their Dogs Home. The interesting point about this is that it's perfectly OK for Councils not to provide content themselves as long as they clearly signpost and link to websites that do - private sector rescue kennels, local charities etc. Perhaps the two most depressing websites are Ceredigion and Merthyr - the two with a joint bottom score of 1. All they can manage is to provide a telephone number for the stray dog service. In fact, Ceredigion is actually unique in that it has no dog related web pages at all. I've searched the site on a number of occasions and all I can find is a directory reference to the Dog Warden's telephone number. Overall, the picture is pretty grim. Only five authorities get results in double figures. The average score is 7.068, which really is shockingly bad. Again, I'd emphasise that I'm not asking for abstruse information, or stuff that is arcane or even just nice to have. For instance, you'd think that Councils would recognise that each year hundreds of dog owners would have to pay to get their dogs back from Council pounds. So here's a revolutionary idea - how about letting them know how much they'll have to pay, what payments are acceptable (cash, cards,) and where to pay - at the Council offices? At the pound itself? With the withdrawal of cheque guarantee cards Councils should certainly make it clearer what payments they take. Councils would actually benefit from this - anything that makes giving them money faster and easier in these days of difficult budgets should surely be welcome. Only Carmarthenshire, Newport and Monmouthshire actually provide all of this information - well done. The following eleven Councils (that's half of them) provide NO information about payments - none at all. Anglesey, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Ceredigion, Flintshire, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire, Powys, Vale of Glamorgan and Wrexham. By doing FOI requests, where I can, I've supplemented each Council page on this website with this information. The top six issues that Councils do cover are:-
Again, I find it astonishing that less than half of Welsh Councils give clear information on what to do if you have either lost your dog or found one. Six authorities give clear information on what to do if you have found a stray, or lost your dog, including at weekends, evenings and on Bank Holidays. These six are Cardiff, Conway, Monmouthshire, Pembrokeshire, Swansea, Torfaen and Wrexham. I wish the remaining sixteen would also do so. Several issues had zero scores - no Council had any information. These were:-
I've already discussed the first two further up the page but was disappointed with the absence of health/disease information. Worming your dog regularly can significantly reduce the impact of Toxocara (a worm that can cause blindness in severe cases). Regular vaccination protects not only your own dog but increases herd immunity, thereby protecting those dogs (especially puppies) who haven't yet been vaccinated. Also, Wales is a rural area with many farming communities. Dog walkers in such areas can be a vector of disease and their dogs can be exposed to a number of illnesses or be vectors themselves for illnesses which affect farm animals such as sheep or cows. Advising on these issues could have a major impact on animal health in the wider sense. This page could also advise on things such as heartworm (now becoming more prevalent) and ticks. Councils have specific legal duties and responsibilities with regard to infectious diseases, animal health - I feel this is a missed opportunity for public education. One of the comments regularly made to me by Council officers is that they don't have time to generate website comment - they are too busy. Sorry, that's rubbish. Firstly, good website content that is clear and informative will save time - customers who can't find what they want on the web will be forced to phone, email or write, thus taking up more officer time and costs. Secondly, information and services that are provided for things like microchipping and neutering will save time and resources for the service in the longer term, reducing the number of strays overall and helping to get dogs reunited with owners more quickly and easily. Also, I think Councils should make an effort to provide this information. Customers deserve to have good, effective, efficient local services that aren't secretive, bureaucratic or cumbersome. Most Councils have high level policy statements that usually waffle on about being proud to serve local communities, or give great customer service - how about some simple steps towards that? What's not to like? More broadly, the information provided for many of the issues would be the same for all Welsh Councils e.g. links to WG Code of Practice, benefits of spaying and neutering, the legal stuff about dog fouling. Why not get together and adopt a common template of information and website content - only needs to to be worked on once (then translated for Welsh content) and each Council can then simply drop in relevant content for their local area. Similar all Wales content is now produced through Waste Awareness Wales for encouraging recycling.
Page updated on 18th January 2012
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