Volunteers fear injured and abused pets and wildlife will have nowhere to go after centres are sold to cover a rising deficit

Shanti Das

Sunday September 13 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

The animal care charity is facing a £47m funding gap

"The RSPCA has closed four animal centres and dismissed hundreds of staff as part of an overhaul that it hopes will help to plug a £47m funding gap.

The majority of the people being made redundant are frontline workers including vets, care assistants and animal collection officers, who attend rescues. About 90 staff in the RSPCA’s inspectorate division have been let go.

The closure of the animal centres by the 196-year-old charity will create 76 job losses. Former staff and volunteers fear that the closures will leave injured and abused animals with nowhere to go.

Among the facilities shutting down is Putney Animal Hospital, which has treated injured pets and wildlife across south London for more than 100 years.

As well as urgent care, it also offers veterinary services at a reduced cost to those on low incomes. The centre carries out 20% of all the RSPCA’s frontline work, treating more than 7,500 animals every year.

The other sites are Southall Cattery and Clinic in south London, and Lockwood Equine Centre and South Godstone Animal Centre, both in Surrey.

Selling the four sites could generate £18m for the charity, according to the RSPCA. Lockwood, which rehabilitates and rehomes horses, was bequeathed to the RSPCA in 2005 by its former owner, Kay Lockwood. The site of the Southall clinic was also donated to the charity.

Laura Stokes, 26, a former volunteer at Southall Cattery, said the centre was “chock-a-block” all the time: “They’re always full. I don’t feel like this is a decision being made in the interests of the animals. If they don’t have anywhere to go, what will happen to them?

“All the staff are absolutely heartbroken. They have concerns about money and what they’re going to do, but they’re also worried about the animals.

“There’s a lot of people who used Putney that don’t fall into any of the postcodes for other charities and don’t have anywhere else to get their veterinary support.”

A care assistant at Putney, who is among those made redundant, said he had been asked to help clear the building and empty equipment into a tip. “It’s unbearable,” he said. “This isn’t just a job for us; it’s a life. We do it for the animals. We can’t believe this is happening.”

The RSPCA, whose patron is the Queen, said Covid-19 had “exacerbated” a “challenging financial situation”. Its latest annual report showed a deficit of £6.9m in 2018 compared with a surplus of £24.8m the year before.

The charity’s figures show it had faced a £12m deficit before Covid-19. This could reach £25m by the end of this year and £47m by 2022. It hopes that cutting about 250 jobs will save £20m by 2022 and said 20% of those affected by the redundancies were managers. The charity has £60m in “free reserves”, but said using this money would leave it in a “precarious” position.

The RSPCA said: “No one wants to be in the position of making these cuts but they were sadly essential and urgent to safeguard our vital services for the future. Unfortunately, the vast majority of our expenditure, rightly, is on our frontline services and we can no longer achieve the savings we need without making cuts to these services.”

The Unite union accused the charity of using Covid-19 as a “woeful excuse” to dismiss staff.

There are also signs of turmoil at the top. In recent weeks four executives in the RSPCA’s leadership team — assistant chief executive Chris Wainwright, group financial controller Helen Tracey, director of finance Kevin O’Brien and head of people and culture Patricia Williamson — have departed.

The charity, which has not yet removed their names from its website, insisted their departures were “entirely unrelated” to the shake-up.

The restructure is part of a 10-year strategy agreed upon by trustees and will be completed by the end of this month.

As well as reducing its deficit, the charity hopes that the changes will help to “modernise” the RSPCA’s culture and organisation.

In June, it said it had been considering adopting the mantra “Animal lives matter” as one of its organisational beliefs, but had ditched it by August in favour of “All animals deserve a good life”.