Posh doggy daycare Pets and Pats: Owner Angela Beer faces sentencing, council says her RMA breaches were to make money
Council's lawyer Laura Bielby told the court the breaches of Resource Management Act enforcement orders were 'intentional' and 'deliberate'.
The enforcement orders were, she said, council's attempt to get the business to a place where it would be operating lawfully.
'The defendant, having agreed to the orders... moved pretty quickly to not comply. This is a case that warrants specific deterrence. The council really has exhausted all its options.
'The defendant knew exactly what they needed to do to regularise the operation and it was a choice not to do that.'
Bielby said it was a 'deliberate and calculated decision, perhaps for commercial reasons' to continue to exceed the allowed dog numbers because more dogs 'resulted in more profit for the business'.
This was a position rejected by Carruthers who said Beer had been taking active steps to move the business from Dairy Flat and that some breaches related to actions by staff.
One example she pointed to was a photograph that showed a staff member with a dog in one of the fields from which dogs were prohibited under the agreement with Beer.
Carruthers said there were breaches that involved staff members and their own dogs which – while not compliant – were of a different character to that which the council alleged.
She said there was no evidence put before the court by council to support its claim Beer was acting for profit.
Rather, she pointed the judge to a line in an affidavit from Beer in which the doggy daycare owner said: 'I have not profited from it.'
'Yes, there has been revenue generated but that is not profit.'
Carruthers said an additional fine – on top of the earlier $77,750 levied against Beer and her company for the earlier breaches – could bring an end to the business.
She told the court that her client might be unable to pay a fine. Judge Tepania invited evidence of that, which Carruthers said would not be provided.
Beer has styled her business as a luxury day in the countryside, targeting dog owners living in Auckland's well-heeled inner suburbs.
Auckland Council was told it would be a 'boutique' facility when it granted a retrospective consent in 2017 allowing the business to operate, years after it had started taking in dogs.
Each weekday morning, a fleet of vans branded Pets and Pats would circle wealthy Auckland suburbs, collecting dogs for a day in the grounds around the manor-like home Beer rented in Dairy Flat, enjoying what the company's website billed as a 'private canine country club'.
The day out would cost dog owners upwards of $50 a head but council inspectors found it cost neighbours something money couldn't buy – the peace and quiet of country life that drew them to the area in the first place.
The rules she agreed to allowed the business a maximum of 60 dogs on the property between 11am and 1.30pm during the week. Winter allowed for an extra hour, to 2.30pm, granting time to wash dogs down before they were returned home.
That limit was found to have been repeatedly broken with inspectors finding 83 breaches between December 2021 and May 2022.
Beer and her company were convicted on those charges, appealed and lost, and were waiting on a final sentencing when Auckland Council filed another tranche of charges, this time over multiple breaches between June 2023 and April 2024.
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Council documents show there were, again, dozens of breaches of the consent – this time carried out while Beer and her company were awaiting sentencing on the earlier conviction.
Throughout this period, Beer had name suppression, meaning the charges against her, the conviction entered and the fresh charges could not be made public. Neighbours, desperate for action, found themselves starved of information when the suppression drew a veil across the court process.
Beer moved from the Bawden Rd property around June last year, moving her Pets and Pats business to former stables in Kumeu.
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