Animal Licences

On the 1st October 2018 the Animal Welfare (Licensing of activities involving animals) Regulations came in to force introducing significant changes to the regime for licensing businesses engaged in activities involving animals.

• These regulations replace a number of separate pieces of legislation covering those activities.
• If your business is engaged in one of the activities listed below you will need to apply for a new license.
• There have been no changes to the procedure for licensing dangerous wild animals.

Existing license holders

If you currently hold a license for one of the activities below this license will remain valid until the end of the current licence term. We will write out to all existing license holders advising them of the new requirement and the licensing process prior to the expiry of that license.

New applications

If your business is engaged in one of the activities below and you do not currently have a valid license you will need to apply for one.

The Government has not yet updated its Gov.uk website to accept new licence applications and so as an interim measure the application will have to be made manually by completing the application form below.

Payment of the license fee can be made via the councils contact centre on 0303 333 4300. We can also provide instructions to pay by BACS or send you an invoice which you can then pay online via the payments portal.

License Fees

The council has introduced a new fees policy for animal activity licenses. These fees have increased from previous years. The policy sets out the full detail and costing of these fees. Fees will now be charged in two parts to comply with the EU services directive. Fee 1 will be payable on application. Fee 2 will be levied on all businesses that satisfy license requirements and will be payable before a license is issued.

• Fee’s Policy

Applications details

If you have any queries please contact environmental.protection@halton.gov.uk

Dangerous Wild animals

We are currently updating our information on dangerous wild animals. If you wish to apply for a license to keep a dangerous wild animal please email environmental.protection@halton.gov.uk