As of Tuesday 28th February our animal clinic is now working
normally once more.
In January our animal clinic suffered two burglaries. In the first, on 2nd January, the back door was forced; in the second, on the 20th, the metal shutter protecting the main front entrance was destroyed and the wooden door behind it forced. In total, over £2,000 of damage was caused.
Following inspection and risk assessment by the head nurse and myself, we decided that it would not be possible to run a clinic session on the next day. Until the main entrance could be repaired and made useable once more we were forced to operate a reduced service for urgent cases only because of the need to keep down the total number of people inside the building for safety reasons. During this time there was no wheelchair access, causing severe inconvenience to disabled users of the clinic. It was nearly a month before normal services could be resumed, because of the need to order a replacement shutter for the entrance which had to be custom-made.
We are now getting quotes for security fencing and an alarm system.
This is likely to be expensive and will obviously impact on our ability
to finance our other animal welfare work. Unfortunately it has become
clear that unless our clinic is made defensible it will eventually be
forced to close (as has happened to several other charity clinics).
The building is insured, but, under the terms of the insurance, the
first £250 of any incident has to be covered by us, meaning
that, in
addition to the disruption to normal animal welfare work,
£500 has been
diverted which would otherwise have been available to help animals.
Last updated 01/03/06