But Cr Neil Gorman said it was unlikely the Kurri Kurri facility had a future because of issues such as contamination on the site.

He moved for the deferral of a decision to close the facility and outsource the council’s impounding activities to the Rutherford RSPCA at Wednesday’s Cessnock City Council meeting to allow for an inspection of both sites.

Representatives of animal rescue groups, including the Hunter Animal Rescue Group, packed the public gallery at the meeting in a bid to stop the closure of the Kurri Kurri shelter.

Hunter Animal Rescue Group had raised concerns the closure would result in hundreds of animals being euthanised.

The group’s marketing manager, Alisha Forbes, said online petitions were being circulated to garner support to save the shelter.

“We’re impressed the councillors held off on making a decision without having seen the sites,” she said on Thursday.

“It has been deferred for a fortnight, and hopefully we’ll get even more people there for support at that next meeting.”

Cr Gorman said it was sensible to defer the matter until the councillors had seen the Kurri Kurri and Rutherford facilities. The inspections are expected to take place within the next two weeks.

“The simple situation is I suspect most of the councillors have never seen Kurri pound – I have because I happen to live up the road – and I suspect none of us, including me, have seen the RSPCA facility at Rutherford,” Cr Gorman said.

“So it makes it very difficult to make an informed decision about whether A is better than B, or B is better than A when we don’t know what we’re comparing.”