I have known Rob Phipps for many years. Yes that makes me biased in his favour, but for good reason.

Whether you’ve known him for 10 minutes or 10 years, you’ll know that he genuinely cares about animals and goes above and beyond the call of duty to care for them.

Perhaps more importantly, he knows how to care for them - it’s easy for the uninformed observer to jump to the conclusion that he doesn’t know what to do or that he’s on a one-man crusade, but that simply is not the case.

Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that, as the RSPCA is involved, he must be the one at fault.

It’s very easy to be cynical and question what he is doing, but when you see the time and effort put in by Rob and the volunteers you will realise he’s got the dogs’ best interests at heart.

I will add that this isn’t something where he’s just started collecting stray dogs and tried to profit from it, it’s something costing him a great deal of time, effort and money because he cares.

As far as I’m concerned, the only things somewhat lacking in Rob’s setup are co-operation from local authorities (and presumably certain members of the community) and to a certain extent resources, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the local authorities and RSPCA have gone about this in totally the wrong way and should be trying to assist his fine efforts however they can.

Additionally, whilst I am not an expert in the field, nor have I specifically inspected the dogs in question, on the odd occasions when I have visited the premises in recent months, I’ve seen no obvious signs of distress amongst the animals (not that I would even dream of there being any issue anyway).

Finally, I would add that (knowing it is a worthy cause and that Rob and the volunteers do a good job), I have personally donated money and am glad to have done so.

ALISTAIR CAMPBELL

Via e-mail