Creature Comforts? Week In Week Out

We donate millions of pounds to the people rescuing unwanted

But, as Christmas approaches, how do we know the animals

in every sanctuary are being looked after properly?

When you go in and find a new rabbit dead...

It was just absolutely heartbreaking.

After concerns are raised about one animal rescue centre,

And a leading vet gives us his opinion.

Would you be happy taking an animal there?

Tonight we ask, can you have faith in your local animal rescue?

There's a limit to what the RSPCA can do and the scale is such

It's the start of the day at this rescue centre in Newport.

Breakfast time for the animals in its care.

You have to make it nice for them, don't you?

This is one of what's believed to be 268 sanctuaries in Wales that take

in stray or unwanted animals and help find them new homes.

Some of these centres are names most of us will have heard of,

big charities like the RSPCA and Dog's Trust...

Someone's going to get an amazing cat with her.

..but in every corner of Wales, there are sanctuaries,

many going unnoticed, which claim they're also making

Many of them are, but with some, it's less clear.

Jackie Taylor, from Wrexham, has looked after rabbits all her life.

She volunteered at her local sanctuary for eight years.

I really enjoyed it at the beginning.

I would just go in and walk the dogs and the volunteers seemed nice.

Jackie started looking after the rabbits there,

and as the years passed and more animals were taken on,

Probably part way through when you realised that

you were reporting things and nothing was getting done.

The fact that the place was dirty and in a state.

but the absolute disregard for animals dying.

The sanctuary Jackie volunteered at is Capricorn Animal Rescue,

It's popular and last year brought in a quarter of a million pounds

They look after approximately 350 animals,

from cats, dogs and rabbits to reptiles, birds

We're absolutely overflowing with animals.

The charity's founder, Sheila Stewart, runs it with her son

and regularly promotes the work she's doing

Sanctuaries like Capricorn aren't regulated.

Boarding kennels like this need a license because they're governed

So too are breeders, and, come to mention it, circuses.

As for sanctuaries, well, the act doesn't cover them

All 268 sanctuaries in Wales, and many more across the UK,

And this can sometimes be the result.

In October this year, the owner of the Second Chance

Horse Rescue Centre in Cornwall, was banned from keeping

You have sanctuaries where unfortunately by the time

we or the local authority go in we're talking about dead

and dying, we're talking about very severe suffering.

Claire Lawson from the RSPCA says that when animals are dead or dying

But she believes there.s a hidden problem.

The number of sanctuaries that we visit

on a regular basis where there are problems,

suggests the problem is relatively deep.

Maybe a visit helps them raise the standards

slightly but it's going back and back again and it's a tremendous

And the resources of other animal welfare resources.

as you see it of animal sanctuaries around Wales - how great is it?

It's significant enough to be talking to you about asking

for regulation and we've been campaigning hard for that.

There's a limit to what the RSPCA can do

and the scale is such that we are concerned.

The RSPCA says under existing law, it's very difficult

And that if sanctuaries were licensed,

And it's not just a problem for the RSPCA.

Alison Ling works for a sanctuary that runs a network of foster homes

in South Wales for people to take in unwanted dogs.

She's had to deal with the consequences of poor conditions

We had one dog that came in to us who had been kept

stacked on top of other dogs, also in crates.

We did manage to get her into a foster home

who later adopted her but she was traumatised.

And this was in a so-called sanctuary?

There are a lot of dogs out there in these tiny rescues.

No-one really has an idea of how many dogs are there

and no-one really knows what standards

the rescues are maintaining and it's only when we get called in

to help and pick up the pieces that we see how bad

In North Wales, former volunteers at Capricorn Animal Rescue have been

Many say they were banned from the sanctuary

A petition was also set up showing more than 2,000 signatures,

and a website claims to expose the "Hidden Truth" of

One of the volunteers who raised concerns is Vikki Savage.

She started at Capricorn in June 2014 and says she noticed very

They were having people cleaning the cattery out and they weren't

using any disinfectant to clean the litter trays.

So obviously if there's five cats in a pen

if you're not keeping on top of the cleaning regime,

that's going to spread right through the lot of them.

So then we started seeing cats becoming sick and cats disappearing

and sometimes we were told that they were homed,

but we'd find out later that they'd died.

I realised that we were telling people that it was bad,

they were shaking their heads and saying,

"We don't really believe you," so I started taking photographs.

Vikki says she found this cat in one of the pens in the cattery.

It was dead, and volunteers believe it was there for some time

When you go in and find a new rabbit dead...

It was just absolutely heartbreaking.

We were finding two, three or four a week, dead.

Vikki says she often told Mrs Stewart she had

concerns about the welfare of the sanctuary's animals.

"I've done this for 30 years, I know what I'm doing."

Volunteers we've spoken to say the public wouldn't be able to spot

some of the alleged welfare problems at Capricorn

So we decided to send in a volunteer undercover to investigate.

So I met Sheila and she vaguely guided me around

But mid-tour, I was sort of left to my own devices.

Our volunteer hasn't been given an induction or any formal training.

Despite this, she's asked to get started in the cattery.

I spent quite a lot of time cleaning them out

and feeding them and making sure that their trays were clean.

We were washing bowls from each of the cat pens

And some of them were covered in faeces

and we were still washing other cats' bowls in it.

which is a small room at the end of the pens...

Our volunteer is also told to sanitise her hands between cages,

The cattery's isolation room appears to house a mixture

of poorly adult cats and litters of kittens.

Their eyes looked weepy and they were climbing in their own mess.

Their paws were wet and damp with urine,

their stomachs were clumpy and wet with urine also.

There was one particular cat that I was told by Sheila

and the volunteer that it had starved almost to death.

and I realised its water bowl was empty.

When I filled it up, the cat drank and drank and drank.

It's taken our volunteer and another four hours to clean out and feed

There appear to be around 350 animals at the rescue,

and few helpers or staff when our volunteer's there.

Basically, throughout the day it was me, Sheila, one volunteer,

Back at the RSPCA's own rescue centre in Newport,

These are all the dogs that we care for who are up for rehoming

Kirsty Morgan is one of five staff at the sanctuary today

there aren't any laws governing this place,

but here they have drawn up their own strict standards.

So this is our isolation of the cattery so this

is where any poorly cats, they stay in here so that none

of the healthy cats get any illnesses as well.

It could be that they've got diarrhoea, it could be that they're

sneezing so we try and keep them in one area.

It's just the same, as you can see, for all the cats in our rehoming.

They still have their water bowl and bedding and as you can see,

they still have all their toys and everything in there

And isolation means isolation, they're kept apart from other cats?

Animal welfare should be at the heart of every good

sanctuary, but the RSPCA and other rescue centres in Wales

say some are falling below expected standards.

particularly when you've got a range of species and a range of situations

that animals that found themselves in that need specialist care.

Are there people out there that are running animal sanctuaries that

It's difficult to quantify but we know there are some

sanctuaries that are not running at the standard

that we would like and that is why we are asking for regulation.

At his surgery in Merthyr, vet Mike Jessop is doing the rounds

So, what do we think is wrong with him?

He ate some of his bedding on Monday.

and is often called as an expert witness in animal welfare cases.

Are they cleaned properly, signs of contamination with faeces,

Those are things I would be looking at from welfare position.

People might say people are doing their best to give

The whole point of animal rescue centre

is to rescue animals from poor welfare.

If you're putting those animals back into poor welfare

then you're not rescuing them, actually prolonging their suffering.

Back at Capricorn, how are the animals faring?

The kittens appear to be dirty again.

our volunteer is rarely given instructions.

But she checks on areas she hasn't been asked to cover and regularly

And there's no water left in this one.

We can't be sure how long these rabbits have

been left without water, but when our volunteer

pours some in a bowl, the rabbits crowd around

I'd seen them a day before and they didn't have any water.

When I went today, I gave them water and they just drank

and drank and drank, so much so I had to

I'll fill it all the way to the top.

The chickens drank for eight minutes.

More kittens are kept inside the house.

And the litter of six we saw in the isolation

room are getting a bath, in Mrs Stewart's kitchen.

Anyone who's got an empty pair of hands gets a kitten flung into it.

It's the afternoon and it looks like the litter trays are full

Some of the pens inside the main cattery also appear dirty.

In one of them, there are pools of diarrhoea.

Our volunteer was asked to clean out and feed all 60 cats in the cattery

but she only had two hours, so at the end of the day she lets

Mrs Stewart know some pens haven't been cleaned including the one

I've almost finished the cats, the two last pens

I'm back at Mike Jessop's surgery, to get his opinion on what we've

These kittens should have somewhere to hide,

huddling together is their only defensive mechanism, and they should

have an area they can crawl into and feel more secure.

That makes them more prone to infection and more difficult

All six appeared to have wet legs and stomachs.

It looks to me like that might be a diarrhoea,

soiling around back end is usually indicative of that.

I would expect kittens with that sort of problem

We're also seeing cats in there squinting.

High risk of conjunctivitis, and conjunctivitis in kittens

immediately raise the spectre of cat flu.

Mrs Stewart told us the kittens were washed every day and seen

She also said the cages in the isolation room were adequate

for the temporary housing of cats and had been approved by her vet

What does Mike think of the rest of the cattery?

I don't like setup of these cats in such heavy concentration.

There are at least four or five allocated to each zone.

I would be a little bit nervous about two cats per set up here.

That's an awful lot for these poor cats.

They've been forced to toilet on top of toilet,

That will be really stressful for them.

To be that thirsty is very unusual and to almost mob the water bowl

as they're doing would cause me great concern that they're

not getting access to sufficient fresh water.

How considerable are concerns you might raise about this place?

Some of the lack of water is truly concerning,

I would be very worried about the fact these animals weren't

having regular access to water and also aren't

Those are key areas bother me with footage I've seen.

Mrs Stewart claims the rabbits are given water every morning

and volunteers top this water up during the day.

She says the shared cat area was cleaned on the day we filmed it

and that some of the cats in there don't use the litter trays.

She also says the chickens are checked twice a day.

Many sanctuaries, including Capricorn, are also charities,

so they have trustees who should be overseeing their activities.

Vikki and another volunteer, Dan Rose, were members of Capricorn

and last year they decided to become trustees.

This meant they could access the charity's records.

That rescue is ten minutes down the road and I can't sleep,

The more and more we got into it, the more and more we realised

there were a lot more problems than initially anticipated.

We wanted the bank account details we wanted all of the accounts.

The charity raised ?250,000 last year.

So that is, that's a hell of a lot of money.

It came to a head after they confronted Mrs Stewart

In December last year Vikki, Dan and ten other volunteers

We'd only been there about 20 minutes, half an hour,

a load of police cars pulled up with blue lights flashing.

And twelve or thirteen volunteers were removed that day.

Dan and Vikki were later sent letters from a new set of trustees,

which included Mrs Stewart, revoking their membership.

Mrs Stewart says some volunteers were fraudulently posing as trustees

and the police were called because they were disrupting

Former volunteers say they also raised concerns about animal

I don't think that the RSPCA have done enough.

They've been given videos of the conditions that the animals

were living in, they've been given photographs of the conditions

that the animals were living in, and it's over a long period of time

that these photographs and the information flow was there.

The RSPCA insists it does act on concerns,

but under the existing law it can only go so far.

If someone raises a concern you must understand their frustration that

nothing much appears to be happening?

Of course, and we share those frustrations hence why it is that

there's such a need for regulations so we can act, as a society

we can act when there's a failing in a sanctuary.

There are only two kittens in here today.

It's the sixth day our volunteer has seen the kittens and they're once

Our volunteer starts to clean the rest of the cattery,

and discovers it's even dirtier than before.

As she goes into one pen she finds a cat she thinks is sleeping.

It's all right, I'll put him in a bin bag and take him

Four of the kittens are now missing from the litter of six,

It's the next day, and as our volunteer walks into the sanctuary

she sees RSPCA officers are here on an unannounced visit.

They've left behind an improvement notice, which the RSPCA says is used

But Mrs Stewart tells it differently.

She says the officers wanted to help her disprove complaints made

So, he said if I can take photos of everything then I can say here's

the proof what you're saying is not true.

The chief inspector sent him down to get evidence to shut that lot up.

So, instead of acting on the volunteers' concerns,

Now we've got the RSPCA to say everything they say are lies.

Now we can go after them for defamation and libel,

The RSPCA says Mrs Stewart's claims are "categorically untrue"

and that its only concern is the welfare of the

We first filmed these pools of diarrhoea on Wednesday,

again on Thursday, the day of the RSPCA's visit,

Despite our volunteer filming it over three days,

Mrs Stewart maintains this is untrue and says the cat pens are cleaned

Mrs Stewart tells our volunteer a vet doesn't yet know why four

of these kittens died and therefore nobody should go in

You know the tabbies and the black and white, those four?

She says she's re-homed three other kittens that were kept in the same

Kittens have died in that facility just next door to kittens re-homed.

They should have been held there for at least a fortnight

to ensure there hadn't been any cross contamination

before they are even considered for re-homing.

Mrs Stewart says the kittens were well grown and fully vaccinated

and after veterinary advice they were cleared to be re-homed.

Mike says in a busy rescue, any animal's death should be

investigated to rule out contagious disease.

Mrs Stewart confirmed that Titch was taken to the vet to be disposed

The dirty conditions are also causing Mike serious concern.

That's truly awful, it shouldn't have been

To be there for three days is just awful.

What you've seen, our footage, what are your overall thoughts?

The problem is they've over-crowded it.

You're then repeating the mistakes of disease transfer,

If you had the authority, would you close this place down?

I would question whether this place should keep going.

Mrs Stewart declined to be interviewed but in statement

she says she's dedicated 58 years of her life to caring for animals,

the charity's received awards and is planning a new isolation unit

She claims the charity has one part-time member of staff and two

volunteers on work schemes, plus up to 20 more volunteers.

She also says unfounded allegations of overcrowding,

deaths of animals being hidden and dying unnecessarily have been

made over a period of 18 months to the RSPCA but that no action has

The RSPCA has told us it's been aware of Capricorn Animal Rescue

for "many years" and has been working to improve

But it says it can't comment further, for legal reasons

The Welsh Government is being urged to introduce a new law forcing

rescue centres to be licenced, meaning regular inspections and

The idea is we would have a licencing system akin

to breeding and boarding establishments and that would be

done through the local authority and you would not be able to run

a sanctuary without having got that licence and satisfied

None of them would be a stretch for any well run sanctuary.

The Welsh Government says it's working with animal charities,

including the RSPCA, to introduce a voluntary code

The worry of the RSPCA and others in field is it will be the good guys

that sign up to voluntary approach, it will be the ones

That's why we need statutory underpinning.

What we're calling for is a mechanism that gives real teeth

to make sure the highest standards are there in all animal

That's what we're saying to Welsh govt now, it's your call,

That's what we're saying to Welsh government now, it's your call,

do what needs to be done and if it's not a statutory basis give us

something else with teeth that will make sure everybody is up

For former volunteers like Jackie and Vikki,

fighting to improve conditions at sanctuaries such as Capricorn,

a change in the law can't come too soon.

It would give out the message to everybody that you can't abuse

And people get recognised for being good sanctuaries

For them to go in and do checks and make sure

that they are being run correctly I think would make

It's the end of the day at the RSPCA's sanctuary in Newport.

Some TLC for these cats facing the prospect of a better

But those people arguing for change say it's the only way such level

Hello, I'm Alex Bushill with your 90 second update.