Home dog boarding licence

Hi,just wondering if anyone has any advice on getting a licence to board dogs at my own home. I'm setting up a pet sitting business. I will only be doing it part time and was hoping to obtain a licence from my council to board a couple of dogs at a time just for a few weeks in the year at my own home(not kennelled) I rang the council and the chap was on about planning permission(he assumed i was talikng about building kennels) and the fee for a licence was £131 plus £80 for a vet visit(every year). i explained that i wasn't talking about buildings kennels-i meant having the dogs live with me.He said 'you can't do that'. I said do you mean that I don't require a licence for home boarding from this particular council?(in which case i need it in writing). He hadn't got a clue what i was talking about and said that he hadn't heard of anyone home boarding before.He hadn't heard of LACORS. He said he would go away and do some more research.
When he called back he said that my council have never recieved a request for a home boarding licence and therefore didn't have any regulations for it.So he said that I would need to apply for an 'animal boarding licence' with the same costs as quoted before.I asked why it was much more expensive than other councils I had looked up and he said thats just the way it is. I can't afford £211 year for a part time business and feel like they are just charging me their standard kennel fee because they don't know what else to do and dont have regulations in place for home boarding
please can anyone tell me if there is anything else i can say to them or if i am just stuck with that fee which would make that part of my business impossible?

My licence with Wiltshire Council cost me £120 for the first licence and then £80 every December. As I took the licence out in July I then had to pay £80 5 months later because of their stupid 'rules' so yes it really is that expensive.

I am covered for boarding animals in my HOME only. The council are fully aware that I don't have kennels and that is the price displayed on their website, so they probably have got it right. However, you shouldn't need a vet check every year.

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/business...es.htm#animalb

Take a look here there's a link to the form I had to complete.

Hope this helps.

ETA: Sometimes you do need planning permission for home boarding establishments, even if you're not building anything. It's for noise levels and things like that. It all depends on the number of dogs you're taking in at any one time. As I can only take up to 4 at one time I didn't need it.

Wouldn't you need planning permission for change of usage to your property? as you are changing your house status from a private dwelling to a business?

thanks for your replies-I would only be boarding 2 or 3 dogs at a time so i don't think i would need planning permission.I would consider £120 a year but they want to charge me almost double that and i can't justify that much. I just feel like the council can't be bothered to look into what they should charge and are just charging as much as they can because they don't have a fee in place for this kind of thing.I looked at that application form which makes sense but my council don't have anything like that on their website-just the application for having kennels/catteries etc.

I agree, I work as a QS and have studied this at uni. I would say you would need planning permission. Before changing the use of any building they need to review the impact it would have on the surrounding community and noise disturbance would play a big part. Just based on what I have been taught.

Hi, the council have now told me I would only need to get planning permission if complaints about noise etc were made by my neighbours. I spoke to the rural council neighbouring my city council and their dog wardentold me that they only charge a fee of £80 a year for a home boarding license and they have heard of it.
this is the reply i got from my council when i told them about this fee and asked why theirs is so high in comparison and how they could even license for something they havent heard of

"Thank you for your email concerning Home Boarding licences.

The ****** City Council do not issue a Home Boarding licence but would deal with the matter under Animal Boarding as no specific conditions exist for Home Boarding as there has been no requirement to date.

The fee for an Animal Boarding licence is set at £131, and has been adjusted in line with inflation since it was agreed by the ******* City Councillors. Each Council is at liberty to set its own fees

******* City council always include the cost of the vet as part of the application. The £80 you quote is an estimate only of the likely fee charged."

do you folks think thats reasonable?I guess theres nothing I can do about it!