Hey everyone,
We wanted to take the time to explain to you about HUGE changes which are currently taking place across our industry and the impact its going to have on our local community.
Over the past few months the government has been hard at work to bring in a new law that will help improve the welfare of animals by providing guidance to businesses that require a licence for activities involving animals. This law has come into effect from the 1st of October.
This impacts many areas:
Dog boarding
Cat boarding
Home boarding for dogs (looking after your pets in someone else home)
Doggie day care
Dog breeding
Pet selling
Hiring out horses
Keeping or training animals for exhibition
The changes do not effect:
Pet sitting (looking after your pets in your home)
Pet grooming
Dog walking
This means any of the businesses above, no matter the size, will need to apply for a licence from the local council to be able to provide these services. All businesses that have a licence (like ourselves) will be inspected under the new rules before the 31st of December, when our current one will expire.
Boarding kennels have previously needed to conform to the Boarding Establishments Act 1963 which as you can imagine is slightly dated and we believe the new regulations, though in places still needs some work, is a positive step to ensure that all businesses are providing the right level of care for the animals they are caring for.
The new regulations will rate all businesses on a 5 star ratings, similar to what you see in restaurants at the moment.
What we are doing about it
We have been attending many workshops on this subject over the past few weeks to ensure that we are at the forefront of the new regulations and to ensure that we are doing everything we possibly can do to achieve the top marks once we have our inspection.
From the workshops we have attended we feel that the majority of the requirements we already meet and exceed and the changes we need to make are all administrative tasks which we are hard at work to implement.
All of our kennels have been built to modern specifications and the sizes of the kennels are above the average size expected. From the workshops we have attended we believe that there will be a number of other businesses that could go out of business as they will be unable to comply to the new rules. This was also backed up by confirmation from the local authority that they expect the number of businesses to re-apply for their licence to reduce.
Please be aware that from next year if you use any of the services listed above that they will need to have a licence that is clearly displayed along with their star rating.
If anyone has any questions and would like to find out more information please let us know :)
Gareth & Anjuli
Pawprints Kennels