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Guide · updated 19 September 2026

How Gloucester's council licenses dog boarders

Gloucester's businesses sit across two licensing authorities. Boarding kennels, home boarding and day care are all licensed activities in England, and where a council has issued a star rating it runs from one to five — shown here as a "council licence rating," the council's own inspection score, kept visually and textually separate from any customer review rating.

CouncilCoversFormatBusinesses here
Gloucester City CouncilQuedgeleyPDF register dated 14 April 2026, 33 rows, full postal address and postcode, five activity columns, expiry date and star rating on every row — the best-fielded format found in this batch of towns7
Tewkesbury Borough CouncilChurchdown & Innsworth, Hucclecote & Brockworth, Tewkesbury, plus one Quedgeley businessLive public web page, trading and licence-holder name, star rating and expiry; borough-wide, no addresses shown10

What the register does and doesn't show

For the seventeen businesses matched to one of these two registers, the licence reference, licence type and star rating on each listing came directly from that council's own register, checked in September 2026. Gloucester City Council's register is the more detailed of the two, giving a full postal address on every row; Tewkesbury's gives no address at all, so addresses for its businesses came from their own sites, not the council. Where a business's own site states a different star rating to its council register — Country Kennels & Cattery and Churchdown Cattery & Kennels both do — the register figure is the one shown here, since it is the checkable source.

The two that could not be checked, and one that may have lapsed

Henley Bank Kennels and Sunnyside Boarding Kennels & Cattery could not be matched to either council's register during our research, despite both being real, findable businesses with a working phone number; Henley Bank's use as a kennels since 1999 is at least confirmed by a 2021 council planning record, though not by a current licence entry. Ask to see a current licence certificate before booking either one. Separately, Special Friends Retreat for Dogs was recorded on Gloucester City Council's register with a licence expiry date of June 2026, which had already passed by the time of our September 2026 check — the business may since have renewed, so ask directly rather than assume either way.

What a star rating means here

A council licence rating reflects the council's own inspection — space, record-keeping, animal welfare standards — not customer experience, and ranges from one to five stars across Gloucester's businesses, including a single business rated one star and three rated the top five. This directory does not rank or hide a business by its council rating; it is one fact to weigh alongside a direct conversation with the business. See our vaccinations and what to ask guide for the questions worth putting to any of them.