How Canterbury's council licenses dog boarders
Dog boarding, home boarding and day care are licensed activities under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. Almost the whole of this page sits inside Canterbury City Council's area, and all eleven businesses listed here are confirmed on that council's own register.
How Canterbury City Council's register works
The council publishes a live public register grouping its licensed businesses into catteries, kennels and home-boarding tables, with each row giving a trading name, postcode and a star rating from one to five. It does not show a licence number or an expiry date for any entry. Where a business quotes its own licence number on its website, as a few of Canterbury's home boarders do, that number is not one the council's register itself publishes, so it is stated on this site as the business's own claim rather than a confirmed register fact.
What the star ratings show
Four of the eleven businesses hold the council's top rating of 5 stars: Muddy Pups, We Love Pets Canterbury & Whitstable, Jenkins Canine Services and Barking Mad (Canterbury & Herne Bay). Two hold 4 stars: Whitstable Dog Care and Bay Pawz. The remaining five, including Pet Lodge Boarding Kennels & Hydrotherapy Centre's kennels licence, hold 3 stars: K9 Kindergarten, Handy Pet Services, Milo & Co, Red Lion Canines and Pet Lodge Boarding Kennels & Hydrotherapy Centre. This is the council's own inspection score, not a customer review, and should be read the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than a Google star.
A second council on one edge of this page
One corner of the Sturry, Blean, Rough Common & Hersden area, around Wingham, actually sits in Dover District Council's area rather than Canterbury's, and Dover runs its own separate, searchable register with a similar star-rating field. The one Dover-licensed kennels found there in research has no confirmed phone number, so it is not published on this page; if you are near Wingham, it is worth checking Dover District Council's own register directly for a fuller current list.
What to check yourself
You can look up any of the eleven businesses above by trading name on Canterbury City Council's own register to confirm its licence type and star rating for yourself. For a licence number or expiry date, which the register does not show, ask the business directly.
What a licence and a star rating cover
A licence and its star score cover premises standards, record-keeping and how many dogs a business may keep at once; a high star score does not fix a price or guarantee a particular room, run or group size, so ask those separately even once the licence checks out.