Dog Owners May face Prosecution 2

This is the response to my email from DEFRA, regarding changes in the law:

Thank you for your email of 30 June about dangerous dogs. I have been asked to reply.

We are committed to tackling the issue of dangerous dogs and irresponsible owners and that is why on 9 May we introduced amendments to the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 as part of the wider Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which will extend the criminal offence of allowing a dog to be dangerously out of control to all places, not just where the dog has a right to be.

The Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent next April and come into force shortly after that. This will enable practitioners to intervene at a much earlier stage and help prevent situations involving dogs becoming more serious.

In future, owners will have to take more care when their dog is in the garden. This is to encourage more responsible dog ownership and protect those who may enter a garden for valid reasons, such as a child retrieving a ball, a neighbour leaving a parcel for later collection or someone entering the front garden to push a local newspaper or leaflet through the letterbox. Such cases would have to be examined on the individual facts and should the police take a decision to prosecute, all common law defences would be available including self defence and defence of property.

It is also proposed, through secondary legislation under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, that from April 2016 all dogs will need to be microchipped. Microchipping makes a clear link between a dog and its owner. Over 100,000 dogs either stray, are lost or stolen each year with many having to be kept in kennels before being re-homed. Having a microchip means they can be reunited quickly with their owners, reducing the stress for dog and owner alike. It will also lead to substantial savings for local authorities and welfare charities which spend some £57 million a year on kennelling costs and will mean that fewer dogs are destroyed. Some 6,000 dogs have to be put down each year, because their owners cannot be found.

Other proposals include the police being allowed discretion as to whether they need to seize a suspected prohibited type dog or whether they can leave it with the owner. We consider that this proposal will remove the need to kennel dogs unnecessarily, which can affect their welfare and future behaviour.

We have also been working closely with the Home Office with their proposed new measures to tackle anti-social behaviour to ensure that they can be used to deal with such behaviour where it involves a dog. This will enable practitioners to intervene at a much earlier stage and help prevent situations becoming more serious

There is no single answer to tackling irresponsible ownership of dogs, which is why we have proposed a number of different measures. The proposals were all subject to a period of consultation last year and will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows.

More details about the proposals can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/d...ivate-property

Thanks for the details. I think the giving of more discretion to the police as to whether they need to seize a suspected prohibited type dog or whether they can leave it with the owner is a good change. For the reasons stated.

The wording of that reply does make it sound as if it is very much a 'done deal' doesn't it? Not something up for discussion - it was discussed a long time ago by the sound of it - last year.