What happened
On 16 May 2017 Theresa Lamb, a Medway Council housing officer, went to a home in Henry Street, Chatham with a colleague. Two officers attended, so she was not working alone that day.
Wendy Hooper was looking after the household dog, a two-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier called Rome, while its owner was at work. She believed the dog was in the back garden, and she let the officers in.
As Mrs Lamb entered the lounge the dog flew at her and clamped its jaw on her right arm, biting to the bone. Hooper tried to beat it off with a broom. It attacked again, taking her left hand, and a third time outside. Mrs Lamb got away by climbing over a garden fence.
The outcome
At Maidstone Crown Court in December 2017 Hooper, then 42, admitted being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control causing injury. Judge Julian Smith imposed 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, 180 hours of unpaid work and a three-year ban on keeping dogs, and ordered the animal destroyed. He called the attack “shockingly savage and severe”.
Mrs Lamb had two operations, for seven wounds to her arm and four to her hand. The court heard she had been left with permanent disfigurement and was still having treatment.
What went wrong
The history was there to be found. The court heard the dog had attacked a Jack Russell and its owner four months earlier. Judge Smith called that history “worrying in the extreme” and said Hooper had chosen to have the dog in the house knowing it “could change at any time”. Hooper told police the dog was “only doing its job”, and said she had not thought it dangerous.
The visit carried a second gap. Two officers went, which is the control a service reaches for when an address might be difficult, but nobody had asked whether a dog was in the house. The dog was loose in the lounge, the room they were shown into, and there was no plan for leaving by any route but the one they came in through.
What it teaches
A colleague is not a control against a dog. Two people in a room with a loose animal are two possible casualties, and one of the bites landed while Hooper tried to beat the dog off. What protects a home visit is the question asked before the door opens: is there a dog, where is it, and will somebody shut it in another room while we are inside.
The second lesson is the exit. Mrs Lamb survived because she got over a fence at the back, not because she outran the animal or because another officer was in the room. Every home visit should have a second way out, the routine ones included.
Questions for the room
- Before you ring the doorbell, do you know whether there is a dog at this address, and has anyone asked?
- Who was going to hold the dog while you were inside, and did you arrange it before you arrived?
- If the front door is behind the dog, what is your other way out, and have you looked for it?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. One source was read in full, KentOnline’s report of the December 2017 sentencing, and confirmed requires two independent sources. No council, HSE or inquest record sits behind it. The three attacks, the two operations, the wound counts, the suspended sentence and the destruction order all come from that single report.
Mrs Lamb was not working alone, and this record says so. The lone-working interest here is the briefing on the address and the exit route, not isolation.
Our lone working training covers what has to be asked about an address before the door opens.
Sources
- KentOnline, December 2017 · https://kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/housing-officer-scarred-in-savage-dog-attack-157359
Reviewed 20 October 2026.