How Doncaster's council licenses dog boarders
Dog boarding, home boarding and day care are all licensed activities in England under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, and in Doncaster a single authority, City of Doncaster Council, issues every one of them under one combined licence category rather than splitting boarding, home boarding and day care into separate registers the way some councils do.
Finding the register
City of Doncaster Council’s own animal-licensing page does not link directly to the register itself; the working register sits at a separate address, the council’s general licence-register site covering everything from taxis to alcohol as well as animal boarding, home boarding and day care together. Every one of the nine businesses listed for Doncaster is confirmed directly against this register, checked in September 2026 — a stronger position than several other towns on this site, where only some listed businesses could be matched to a working council source.
What the register shows, and does not
Doncaster’s register gives a licence number, a trading name, a start date, an expiry date and a star rating from 1 to 5 for each licence, which made matching businesses to their listing straightforward. It does not give an address at all, so a street address shown on a Doncaster business’s page here comes from the business’s own site or another public source, not from the council.
Star ratings across Doncaster’s nine
Every business listed carries a current star rating on the register. Doncaster’s three home boarders, Hannah’s Happy Hounds, Paws 4 A Break and Jake’s Adventures Pet Care, each hold 5 stars. Among the six kennels, Oakwood, Mayflower, Bryce and Longmeadow Pet Hotel hold 3 stars, and Chaiquinta Pet Hotel & Grooming Salon holds 2 stars. A star rating is the council’s own inspection score, tied to how often a licence is reinspected, and is not a customer review, so read it the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than a Google star.
When a licence changes hands
A licence number and its star rating belong to whoever currently holds it, which does not always line up neatly with how long a business says it has traded. Chaiquinta states on its own site that it has traded since 1984, but the current licence matched to it on the register only commenced in January 2026 under the current licence holder’s name — a sign the licence, and possibly the business itself, may have changed hands recently rather than evidence against how long the site has operated. It is worth asking any long-established business directly whether its current licence reflects a recent change of ownership.
Checking it yourself
Ask any Doncaster business for its licence number and, if it matters to your decision, check it yourself on City of Doncaster Council’s own register rather than relying on a claim made on a business’s own website, which this directory cannot independently verify either. See our vaccinations and licences guide for the other questions worth asking before you book.