The RSPCA’s Community Animal Welfare Footprints awards recognise good practice from local authorities, housing providers and contingency planners in relation to animal welfare. This September, they awarded Lambeth Council a gold Stray Dogs Footprint, a gold Animal Establishments Licensing Footprint and – for another year – Housing Management won a Gold Housing Footprint.
Stray dogs gold footprint
The Stray Dogs Footprint recognises that Lambeth Grimebusters and Pest Control team runs a comprehensive stray dog service including out-of-hours services. The team routinely scans every stray dog for a microchip to identify its owner, and works with Battersea Dogs and Cats Home to re-home dogs when an owner cannot be found.
Animal establishments gold footprint
The Animal Establishments Licensing Footprint award demonstrates Lambeth’s commitment to animal welfare through policies and procedures when licensing animal establishments – pet shops, dog breeders, dog boarding, performing animals, riding schools and zoos – with London Aquarium as the biggest example in the borough. Regular inspections take place at all our licensed animal establishments and our policies require all licensed establishments to meet the conditions set out in the most recent edition of the model licensing conditions. This ensures that standards are higher than the minimum required.
Raising standards
“The RSPCA works closely with local authorities, the police, local resilience forums and housing associations to help them to deliver animal welfare services. This year we were pleased to have seen significant progress in local authority and housing provider animal welfare services, with many authorities going on to exceed the standards they achieved last year, continuing the trend since the scheme was first launched in 2008.” – Rachel Williams, Senior Parliamentary Adviser, RSPCA
More information
- Community Animal Welfare Footprints (CAWF) is run by the RSPCA to recognise organisations that go above and beyond basic requirements to ensure higher welfare standards for animals in the services they provide. See the RSPCA information pages for more about the Campaign for Animal Welfare.
- The RSPCA is the world’s longest-serving Animal Welfare charity. Find out about everything they do to protect animals and how you can help on their information pages.
- For more about London Aquarium see their information pages
- For more about Battersea Dogs and Cats Home see their information pages
