Dangerous dogs

Following last year's dangerous dog attack on the Dover House Estate, the Council last week announced it would evict tenants who own potentially dangerous dogs.

We all want action on dangerous dogs. But dogs are not dangerous by dint of their birth alone - they become so because they are mistreated or bred to fight.

The Council's rules will do nothing to weed out these owners, but they do threaten those with "potentially" - whatever that means - dangerous dogs that have never so much as snarled in anger or aggression before, and are properly controlled by responsible owners.

These rules will also only apply to council tenants. Homeowners and housing association tenants are exempt. So on the Dover House estate these measures will affect virtually no-one because the overwhelming majority of homes here have been sold-off by the council. And while a council tenant with a potentially dangerous dog may face eviction, their next door neighbour who is a leaseholder with a genuinely dangerous dog will remain untouched. Is that fair? Will it tackle the problem? No on both counts.

The Council's spin doctors will say at least they're doing something. But in this case, the council's guilty of doing something instead of doing something effective. Far better would be a doubling of the budget of their own dog warden service so they can patrol more widely, raise their profile and tackle the problem without picking on one particular section of the community.

I'm not a fan of ever more regulation and nanny-statism: we already have way too much of that. What we need is tougher action on criminals who mistreat their dogs, stronger action against the dog-fighting rings we all know exist in our borough and strong community policing.

Again, our Safer Neighbourhoods Police teams must play a crucial role, working with the dog warden service to achieve these goals. The objective: identifying those who can't control or are mistreating their dogs - and acting before events like those that took place in Putney Park Lane last October happen again.