How modern dog rescue centres operate nowadays

[ttaskmaster]

I just think the pendulum has swung a bit too far the other way and may encourage people to go breeders when their original intention was to re-home a rescue dog.

Perhaps, but as mentioned - Doing all the admin ahead of seeing the dog is mostly a Covid hangover, while the more stringent stuff is in reaction to the rise in incidents.
Until things calm down, I expect nothing will change.