How Chelmsford's council licenses dog boarders

Chelmsford City Council is the licensing authority for all nine areas this directory covers: City centre, Springfield, Great Baddow, Galleywood, Writtle, Broomfield, Chelmer Village, Danbury and the CM3 villages, and South Woodham Ferrers. 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, and every one of the 17 businesses listed here is checked against Chelmsford City Council's own public register.

How the register works here

Chelmsford's register is a live, paginated web table giving a reference number, trading name, address, licence expiry date and a 1-to-5 star inspection score for every entry, which this directory read directly rather than through a third-party mirror. A higher star score also carries a longer licence, from one year at the lowest score up to three years at the highest, under the same 2018 regulations.

The star scores on this page

Bylake Boarding Kennels and Cattery and Harvesters Farm Kennels carry the two 3-star licences here; Epic Tails, Essex Bark And Stay, Janies Dog Walking And Pet Boarding and Pooches And Me carry 4 stars; the rest carry 5. This score is a government inspection score, not a customer review, and this directory keeps it in its own "Council licence" panel on each listing rather than mixing it with any Google, Trustpilot, Fresha, Booksy or Yelp rating a business might separately hold.

Checking it yourself

You can look up any business's trading name on Chelmsford City Council's public register of animal boarding to confirm its licence, star score and expiry date directly, rather than relying on this page alone.

What a licence covers, regardless of the star score

Whether a licence carries three stars or five, every business listed here has been assessed against the same 2018 regulations covering space, exercise, feeding, record-keeping and how many dogs may be kept at once. Chelmsford City Council can revoke or refuse to renew a licence that falls below standard, so a current licence and a current star score together are a more meaningful check than either fact alone.

How this directory read the register

Chelmsford's own register page uses a pager that does not follow a plain web link, so reading it in full meant going through each page of results directly rather than relying on the first page alone. That matters because stopping at the first page would have missed some of the businesses shown on this site; anyone checking the register themselves should page through it fully too. The star score and expiry date shown for each business here were checked in September 2026; a licence due for renewal soon may show a different score by the time you call, so treat the figure as a recent check, not a permanent fact.