How Basingstoke and Deane licenses dog boarders
Dog home boarding is a licensed activity under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. In Basingstoke, licensing is split between two different councils depending on the area: Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council covers Basingstoke town centre, Chineham, Oakley, Overton, Tadley and Whitchurch, while Hart District Council covers Hook and Odiham.
Basingstoke and Deane's own register
Basingstoke and Deane publishes its own home-boarding list directly on its website, giving a contact name and phone number for nearly every entry, which is the source behind most of the phone numbers shown on this site. It does not, however, publish an address, a licence number or a star-rating field for most entries; a separate third-party mirror, animal-licensing.uk, adds a partial street address for some premises but likewise carries no star field for this authority. Because of this, no council star rating is shown on any of the 26 Basingstoke listings here, even where a business states its own star figure on its own website. Several, including Hilltop Dogs, WhiteWalks, iCare Pet Services and Shobs Happy Pawlidays, state a 5-star licence rating themselves; treat these as the business's own claim, not a figure read directly off the council's register.
Licence numbers
Where the register or a business's own site gave a specific licence number, it is shown on the listing: Holly's Boarding (22/01257/AWAAL), Hilltop Dogs (23/00389/AWAAL) and WhiteWalks (18/01579/AWAAL). For the other 23 of the 26, only a contact name and phone number were confirmed, so ask each one directly for its licence number and check it yourself against the council's published list.
Hook and Odiham: a different council, and a register that cannot be matched to a business
Hook and Odiham fall under Hart District Council rather than Basingstoke and Deane. Hart's own licence spreadsheet records only the licensed person's name, with no trading name, address or phone number attached, and Hart's district covers a much wider area than Hook and Odiham alone, so no entry on that register could be confirmed as a specific business serving either area. This is a gap in what Hart's register publishes, not evidence that no licensed home boarder operates in either place; ask Hart District Council directly if you are searching there.
What the licence covers regardless
Wherever it is confirmed, a home-boarding licence under the 2018 regulations covers the home's suitability, record-keeping and how many dogs may be kept at once; it does not fix a price, promise a particular room, or guarantee a specific group size, so ask those questions separately even once a licence itself checks out.
Why some listings carry less detail than others
Sixteen of the 26 Basingstoke listings are marked medium confidence and seven low, meaning a verified phone number and a licence match were found but little else could be confirmed independently, usually because no website or social page exists for the business. That is a gap in what could be found in research, not a mark against the licence itself; a low-confidence listing is licensed the same as a high-confidence one, so ask the same questions of any of the 26 regardless of how much detail its listing carries.