1) How many dedicated animal health and welfare staff in your Local Authority (by FTE) in each the following years: 2017, 2018, 2019?
Enforcement of animal health and welfare legislation is performed by Trading Standards Officers (TSOs) and we do not have any staff dedicated to this role. Budgeted FTE staffing levels of TSOs in the years mentioned were as follows:
2017/18=68.11
2018/19= 69.96
2019/20=69.57
2) How many dedicated on-farm animal health and welfare staff in your authority for these years?
Please see our response to question 1 above.
3) How many farm inspections/visits did your Local Authority carry out in each of these years? (If possible, please split between proactive and reactive visits)
2017/18 – 362
2018/19 – 296
2019/20 – 91 (as of 22nd October)
We do not hold the information in relation to proactive and reactive visits. We can further confirm that other visits in relation to Farm Animal Welfare include Collection Centres, Livestock Markets, Abattoirs and Haulier visits.
4) How many prosecutions for farm animal welfare offences has your Local Authority made in each of these years?
The totals below relate to cases completed in each financial year
2017/18 – 2
2018/19 – 6
2019/20 – 3
If it does not exceed the time limit, please also provide the following:
5) The amount of resource applied to animal health and welfare in these years.
We do not hold a meaningful figure for this. The Devon, Somerset and Torbay Trading Standards Service budget was:
2017/18 – £3.508m
2018/19 – £3.395m
2019/20 – Anticipated £3.395m
PLEASE NOTE that for all the above answers you should note that in May 2017 Torbay Council’s Trading Standards Service was combined with the Devon and Somerset Trading Standards Service and these figures relate to the joint service from that date.