How to check if someone has a dog boarding licence
In England, check the council's list of licensed businesses, the star rating and the licence number on the operator's website. What a boarding licence covers.
The kennel’s website says licensed and insured. The certificate behind reception is a photocopy in a frame, and from where you are standing you cannot read the date on it. The dog goes in four minutes.
To check a dog boarding licence, get the licence number and confirm it with whoever issued it. In England that is the local council, and the operator has to show the number on its website and a copy of the licence on the premises, so most of the check can happen before you leave home. English councils are also told to publish a list of licensed businesses with each one’s star rating, and Colorado publishes a searchable list too. Elsewhere you’re left with one call to a licensing office and a careful read of the certificate itself.
How do you check if someone has a dog boarding licence?
Four steps, and only the second depends on your authority having published anything.
- Find the issuing body. The level varies. England’s regulations put the decision with the local authority, usually the district or borough council, and GOV.UK’s find your local council tool names it from a postcode. Colorado’s sits with a state department. Outside those two, your municipality’s licensing office can tell you which body applies, and it is the same call that tells you whether a public list exists.
- Search the list. Where a register is published, this is a name lookup. Try the business name, then the street address, in case the trading name and the licensed name differ.
- Ask for the certificate. A refusal is itself an answer. Read the premises address, the licence number, the expiry date and the issuing authority, then photograph it. The authority’s name is what you need for any follow-up call. In England the number should already be public: paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the licensing regulations requires a copy of the licence to be “clearly and prominently displayed” on the premises, and the holder’s name followed by the licence number on “any website used in respect of the licensable activity”. If an English boarding business advertises online with no number, ask why before you book.
- Read what it covers. Match that wording against what you are booking. A certificate can say day care while you are arranging a week of overnight stays.
Is there a register you can search?
In England, usually. Defra’s statutory guidance for local authorities says councils should keep a list of licensed businesses and their star ratings on their websites. It says should, not must, so some councils publish a searchable register while others answer by phone or email. Search the council’s site for “animal activity licence” before you call.
Colorado publishes one too. The Colorado Department of Agriculture states that its PACFA Active Facilities List “is published weekly to capture the most up-to-date information”, and provides it as a spreadsheet you can search, sort and download. A disclaimer sits beside it: the list “contains all currently licensed PACFA facilities”, and the department “is not responsible for any issues that may arise from the use of this data”. The same page gives an email address and a phone number “for additional support in locating a facility on the list”.
The same department describes PACFA as “a licensing and inspection program dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of pet animals in facilities throughout Colorado”, and its programme page carries the rules at 8 CCR 1202-15 alongside a complaint form. A Colorado owner can settle the question in the browser.
Ask your own licensing office whether it publishes one. That answer decides whether this is a lookup or a call.
What does the star rating on an English licence tell you?
How the council judged the business at its last inspection. The same Defra guidance says every applicant must be given a star rating from 1 to 5, based on its compliance history and the results of its inspection, that the rating must be added to the licence, and that the licence should be displayed by the business. It also says each facility has its own licence and star rating, which matters with franchise businesses: one brand name does not mean one licence covers every branch.
The length of the licence is a second signal. Regulation 5 of the 2018 regulations lets the council grant a boarding licence for one, two or three years, depending on its assessment of the risk of the operator breaching the conditions and whether the operator already meets higher welfare standards. A rating can also move between renewals: the guidance gives the example of a rating going down after an inspection to investigate a welfare complaint. So read the date beside the stars, and compare the certificate on the wall with the council’s current list.
Outside England the scheme is different. GOV.UK’s licence finder sends anyone running a kennel or cattery in Wales or Scotland to their council and anyone in Northern Ireland to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, and the star rating above is England’s.
What does a boarding licence cover?
One kind of boarding, on one named set of premises. In England, boarding is a single licensable activity that paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 to The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 splits into four named limbs: “providing boarding for cats; providing boarding in kennels for dogs; providing home boarding for dogs; or providing day care for dogs”. Each limb has its own Part of Schedule 4 setting its conditions, and regulation 4 makes the local authority attach those conditions to every licence it grants.
| Limb named in Schedule 1 | What that line is about | What the same line leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Providing boarding for cats | Cats, staying on the premises | Anything involving dogs |
| Providing boarding in kennels for dogs | Dogs, overnight, in kennels | Home boarding, day care |
| Providing home boarding for dogs | Dogs boarded in a home setting | Kennel boarding, day care |
| Providing day care for dogs | Dogs, for the day | Overnight stays of any kind |
The same paragraph frames all four as accommodation for “other people’s cats or dogs in the course of a business on any premises where the provision of that accommodation is a purpose of the business”. A licence is attached to a place and to a line on that list.
So ask which line the certificate names. A business that boards overnight and runs a day room may hold two of them, or one, and be selling you the other. For a cat, the line to look for is the first one, and the cat boarding checklist moves on to the space itself.
When is there no licence to check at all?
When nobody is being paid. The same Schedule 1 opens with a business test, and it tells the local authority to take into account, for example, whether the operator “makes any sale by, or otherwise carries on, the activity with a view to making a profit, or earns any commission or fee from the activity”. A neighbour who takes your dog for a weekend and waves the money away is a long way outside that.
That matters because of what people do with a blank result. A missing record proves nothing when no licence was ever required, and the informal arrangement, a friend or a relative keeping the dog for a week, sits outside the regime entirely. The procedure above is the wrong tool for them, and its blank result is the right answer.
What replaces it is slower and entirely on you. You are left with references and a meet and greet, and with a written agreement, which is the subject of what a pet sitting contract should cover. For an individual coming into your house instead of premises you drop at, the questions worth asking are in our note on the workday gap. Both belong to the wider guide to sharing pet care.
What does a licence not prove?
Who will actually be with your dog. The certificate identifies a set of premises and a permitted activity, which leaves the person in the room on Tuesday afternoon outside its scope entirely. An English licence does carry staffing conditions. Schedule 2 of the same regulations requires “Sufficient numbers of people who are competent for the purpose” to be available, and makes the licence holder “provide and ensure the implementation of a written training policy for all staff”. A condition on the holder is still not a name on a rota. Colorado’s programme pairs licensing with inspection, and even there the certificate stays silent on who is on shift the week you travel.
The date is the other gap. A certificate describes the day it was issued, and registers go stale between updates, which is why Colorado republishes its list weekly. Read the date on whatever you find, and phone the issuer if it is old.
Once the licence question is settled, the risk moves to the handover: what they know about your dog, who they are allowed to call, and what they may decide without you. That is the subject of boarding your dog for the first time.
Where Dana fits
A licence check stops at the door of the building. Dana covers the stretch after it: caregiver access with its own role and an end date, so a sitter or a kennel contact loses access when the stay ends, and every task and log signed with who did it and when. The health record already holds the vaccination dates, the vet’s number and the current medication, which is most of what an intake form asks for at the desk.
Questions people ask
What should I ask to see before I book a boarding stay?
The licence certificate itself, and then read which activity it names, who issued it and when it expires. Photograph it at the desk so you can check it against the issuing authority's own list later, rather than from memory.
Does a licence mean the facility has been inspected?
It depends on the programme. Colorado's Department of Agriculture describes PACFA as a licensing and inspection program, so the two arrive together there. Elsewhere, ask the issuing authority what the licence required and when the premises were last inspected.
Does a friend who watches my dog need a licence?
Usually no, because these regimes are built around business activity. England's regulations tell the local authority to weigh whether the operator carries on the activity with a view to making a profit, or earns any commission or fee from it, and an unpaid friend falls outside both.
What does the star rating on an English boarding licence mean?
Defra's statutory guidance tells councils to give every licensed business a rating from 1 to 5 stars, based on its compliance history and its inspection, and to add the rating to the licence. The rating can go down after an unannounced inspection, so check the current one on the council's list rather than an old certificate.
What if there is no register for my area?
Call the municipality or council where the facility operates and ask two things: who issues boarding licences here, and whether a list is published. If nothing is published, you are left with the certificate on the wall and the phone number of the body that issued it.