Ministers reject dog ownership licence scheme

The Responsible Dog Ownership Taskforce was established by the authorities successful 2022, pursuing a bid of high-profile canine attacks.

The taskforce's study noted that since 2011 the canine colonisation successful the UK had grown by 35%, portion infirmary admissions relating to canine bites successful England had risen by 77%.

It said favored ownership had spiked during the Covid pandemic astatine a clip erstwhile it was harder to entree enactment services.

"This led to little experienced owners struggling to entree services and uncovering it harder to get help," the study said.

Until 1987, canine owners successful England, Wales and Scotland had to wage an yearly interest to get an ownership licence.

The strategy was scrapped connected the grounds that the magnitude of wealth it raised was outweighed by the operating costs.

Dog owners successful Northern Ireland inactive person to bargain a licence of £12.50, oregon £5 if the proprietor receives an income-related benefit.

In France, owners of the astir unsafe dogs person to get peculiar permits which tin impact passing a grooming people and putting the canine done a behavioural assessment.

Switzerland antecedently required imaginable canine owners to implicit a cognition test, followed by a practical, but this information has been scrapped.

The study said that astir members of the taskforce backed introducing ineligible requirements for canine owners but "further information would beryllium needed regarding the signifier that this should take".

"Any ineligible request would request cautious information of its nonsubjective and not look arsenic a taxation connected already liable canine owners.

"Reintroducing a cosmopolitan canine licence whitethorn magnitude to different database of liable owners oregon an administrative workout with small nationalist information payment oregon accidental to beforehand liable canine ownership."

It said options could see focusing a strategy connected high-risk dogs, introducing inheritance checks connected owners and requiring imaginable owners to walk a cognition test.

The Dogs Trust and the RSPCA person commissioned probe into the costs and benefits of antithetic systems and their conclusions are owed to beryllium published aboriginal this year.

In a ministerial foreword to the report, situation curate Baroness Hayman of Ullock said: "In caller years, we person seen a concerning emergence successful canine attacks, alongside changes successful patterns of canine ownership."

She said the taskforce's study was an "important and timely contribution", adding: "As ministers, we are cautiously considering the recommendations alongside the wider programme of enactment already nether way."