Ex SPCA volunteer
A former Southland SPCA chairwoman and volunteer for nearly 30 years says the organisation has reduced its services and no longer has a presence in the community.
However, the SPCA has rejected the claims and says its team is committed to providing animal welfare services across Southland.
Former staffer Rachel Hucklebridge left the SPCA in 2018 after 28 years of voluntary service in roles such as chairwoman, animal welfare inspector and animal ambulance driver.
New Zealand’s 46 regional SPCA branches had united to form a single organisation in 2017 but Hucklebridge believed the move had not turned out well for Southland.
Hucklebridge, who has aligned herself to Southland animal welfare organisation Furever Homes, said when the SPCA national body took over in the region it was gifted a new building worth $1.9 million and $200,000 dollars in the bank, with another $100,000 to come in a bequest.
It was a sustainable operation, but she said there had since been high staff turnover and a reduction in services.
SPCA southern region general manager Sam Powell did not address the issue of high staff turnover, but said its Invercargill centre was led by an experienced and capable manager who was developing a ‘‘forward-focussed’’ team dedicated to animal welfare.
‘‘One week they will take in a surrendered cat, the next week they won’t, what are their policies?’’ Rachel Hucklebridge
There had not been a reduction in services, Powell said.
‘‘Rather, SPCA staff are deployed across the Otago and Southland communities to ensure we can provide range of services in the most efficient and effective way.’’
A key goal in bringing all SPCA centres into one organisation was to ensure services were delivered in a more consistent way across the country and animals received the same level of support no matter their location.
The SPCA was thankful to Southland’s support in building its ‘‘excellent’’ facility near Invercargill, Powell said.
In the first nine months of this financial year $340,000 had been invested in the Invercargill area while income from community donations had been less than $10,000, she said.
Hucklebridge said Southland SPCA had three animal welfare inspectors when she had left but now had only one based in Dunedin who was unable to attend animal welfare issues urgently in Southland.
She claimed the organisation had
‘‘no presence’’ in the community and the public did not know what its polices were.
‘‘One week they will take in a surrendered cat, the next week they won’t, what are their policies?’’
The SPCA was asking for money from the public, but she questioned whether it was producing the services it claimed to.
Powell said inspectors had previously held dual roles in Southland.
When the SPCA became one organisation it had deployed its resources more efficiently across communities while ensuring agreed response times were met, she said.
If any members of the public had any animal welfare concerns they should contact the SPCA and it would investigate.
She believed the Southland community had a positive relationship with SPCA as shown by an open day several months ago which attracted hundreds of people and a street appeal which raised ‘‘thousands’’ of dollars for animals in need.
Hucklebridge said the change to a national structure had been detrimental to the organisation and it had been sad to watch, with prosecutions of animal abusers in Southland drying up since the national organisation took over.
The SPCA had said it would take in and care for sick, injured and neglected animals with nowhere else to go during lockdown but Hucklebridge said she knew of three cases in Southland where it told the public to let cats go when they were unable to be cared for.
Powell agreed that ‘‘in this instance we didn’t get it quite right’’, and she apologised for distress caused.
She said the SPCA would not hesitate to prosecute cases of animal cruelty.
Becoming one united organisation had led to significant gains for animal welfare across the country, she said.
Continuing to run a nationwide service with 46 centres was not sustainable and the new structure had allowed SPCA to be ‘‘forward-thinking, dynamic and agile’’.
The SPCA was focussed on improving animal welfare outcomes and it could do so most effectively by working together, Powell said.