Calls to Whanganui animal control drop as focus turns to prevention

Calls to Whanganui Animal Control are down

Calls to Whanganui animal control are in decline and staff are looking to get back to preventative work and education.

The animal control team received 5209 calls in 2016/17 down from 6437 the previous year, a report to the Whanganui District Council's annual report on dog control policy and practices says.

Wandering animal (1771 down from 2277) was the most common complaint followed by barking dogs (1199 down from 1406).

Council's regulatory and customer services manager Iain Brown said the 2016 restructure of the animal control team and a fresh focus on ensuring complaints get a response was behind the improved numbers.

"There's a whole bunch of things we've done to tidy up that," he told councillors.

That had come at the expense of patrols and education initiatives.

"During this period we were operating with staff under due to recruitment issues at the time. We've just recruited another AMO to start in the next month," Brown said.

Whanganui councillor Jenny Duncan said the new approach was "well overdue" and asked if there an intention to increase the patrols and in particular the education.

"We'll be looking to recruiting an officer for that," Brown said.

"Once we get up to a full strength we'll be able to do more proactive stuff especially as the compliance is actually picking up over the last year."

Whanganui district has 7744 dogs known to animal control with 7400 or 95.6 per cent registered.

"We're never going to get it to zero and there will always be non-compliance but that's a pretty good figure," Brown said.

Councillor Kate Joblin said she was impressed with the animal control numbers.

"The trend is what we need to be focusing in, it's down 1200 animal control requests for service. It's excellent work."