Looking after prisoners' dogs is costing Thames Valley Police nearly £400,000 a year

According to the force, if a person is arrested and there is no one who can care for their dog, the animal will be treated like any other item of property and will be taken care of by police under the Animal Welfare Act.
The dogs are cared for at a Kennels in West Sussex and the pets are housed from the time someone is arrested and remains in custody, but the force cease to be legally responsible once they are bailed or charged.
In some instances whereby a prisoner is remanded in custody for a long time the police said they liaise with that person and work to remove the dogs from police kennelling, either by re-homing them, or in some cases by destroying them if they are not suitable for re-homing.
Thames Valley Police spokesperson Connie Primmer said that the force was looking at ways to try to reduce the costs which were blamed on callout fees and contractor’s recovery and mileage costs for the centre based more than 50 miles from Newbury, particularly when they are called to collect the animals out of hours. She admitted that the police force have their hands tied.
She said: “There’s not much we can do about it now, we have a legal responsibility for the property of those prisoners.
“We are working to reduce the costs in several ways, such as seizing dangerous dogs only when it’s essential, for example if they pose a danger to the public.”
The spending for the dogs was £387,000 between 2013 and 2014, and in the wake of recently announced cuts to their spending, the budget has now been reduced to £302,000 for the current year and will drop to £200,000 from April 2015.
Prisoner’s dogs amount to roughly half of the dogs seized, 80 per cent of which are from poachers and hare coursers according to police.
Dangerous dogs can be seized by Thames Valley Police under Sections 1 and 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, The Hunting Act 2004 and the Animal Welfare Act 2005 while officers investigate offences.
The police force are also obliged to recover and retain dogs when the owner has been incapacitated or is deceased, and also deal with a small number of stray dogs when the local authority does not provide out of hours collection provision.