How Bournemouth's councils license dog boarders
Two licensing authorities cover this page's seven areas. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council covers Bournemouth town centre, Boscombe, Southbourne, Winton, Kinson and Christchurch — twelve of the fourteen businesses listed here. Dorset Council covers Ferndown and West Moors, the remaining two. In England, boarding kennels, home boarding and day care are all licensed activities under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, whichever council issues the licence.
BCP Council's register
BCP publishes a single downloadable PDF, its "Animal Activity Register," covering licensed activity across the whole council area, with a licence number, address, activity type, expiry date and star rating for each entry. Ten of Bournemouth's twelve BCP-area businesses are matched to a row on that register; all ten currently carry a 5-star rating. SoBo Hounds and Personal Pet Care could not be matched to a register row under their trading names, so no licence or star rating is shown for either on this site.
Dorset Council: no downloadable register
Dorset Council, covering Ferndown and West Moors, does not publish a downloadable or bulk-searchable register at all. Its own site offers only a one-business-at-a-time online lookup form, not a list a directory can check systematically. Country Kennels Dorset and Dorset Paws & Snores both state they hold a Dorset Council licence, but that claim comes from the businesses themselves, not from an independent check of a public register, so no star rating is shown for either.
Why every BCP star score shown here is 5
England's licensing regulations allow for a 1-to-5 star inspection score, and it happens that all ten of Bournemouth's BCP-matched businesses currently carry the top score. That is a fact about which businesses this page could match to the register, not a claim that a lower-starred business doesn't exist in the area; a star score is also a snapshot from a business's last inspection, and can change at its next renewal.
What to check yourself
You can check a business against BCP's own register on its licences and permits page; the register itself is a PDF linked from there, so allow it a moment to download. For a Ferndown business, Dorset Council's own licence-check page is the only public route, checking one business at a time.
What a licence covers, regardless of the council
Whether or not a star score is visible on this page, every licensed business in Bournemouth has been assessed against the same 2018 regulations covering space, exercise, feeding, record-keeping and how many dogs may be kept at once. A council can revoke or refuse to renew a licence if a business falls below standard, so a current licence is itself a meaningful check even where this page cannot show a star figure.