Animal Activities Licensing, boarding & day care

SI 2018/486 · Local authority licensing, England

The statutory licence a boarding kennel, home boarder or dog day care in England must hold, carrying a public star rating.

01 What It Is

The same Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 that license dog breeding also license commercial boarding: boarding kennels, dog home boarding and dog day care. Anyone offering these as a business in England must hold a licence from their local authority, and running such a service without one is an offence.

02 What It Covers

Operators are licensed and inspected against minimum standards for the activity, covering housing, supervision, hygiene, exercise and record-keeping, with day care, which does not keep dogs overnight, treated as its own category. As with breeding, a baseline of standards must be met for any licence, and a set of higher standards sits above it for operators who choose to aim higher.

03 How It Is Checked

Each licensed business is inspected and given a star rating from one to five, set by combining its welfare standards with a risk assessment of its compliance history; the rating determines how long the licence runs. A business can appeal its rating within a short window, and pay for a re-inspection if it improves. The rating is public, so an owner can check it before leaving a dog.

04 Why It Matters

Leaving a dog in someone else’s care is an act of trust an owner cannot easily verify. The licensing regime gives commercial boarding a statutory floor, an inspection behind it, and a public rating an owner can read, which turns “licensed” from a claim into something checkable before the kennel gate.