How Hemel Hempstead and Chesham's councils license dog boarders

Dog boarding, home boarding and day care are licensed activities under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, and the twelve businesses listed across Hemel Hempstead and Chesham fall under two councils: Dacorum Borough Council and Buckinghamshire Council. The two publish their registers very differently.

Dacorum Borough Council's own register

Dacorum Borough Council publishes its own PDF register directly, its "Register of Animal Activity Licences," giving a licence number, expiry date and star rating for every entry across a full activity-type grid. All seven of the town's Dacorum-licensed businesses are confirmed here: Pet Relief (5 stars, licence M057995), Cosy Paws Dog Boarding (4 stars, licence M059421, a more recent number than the one shown on its own site), Auntie Kelz Dog Home Boarder and Day Creche (5 stars, licence M061319, also a newer number than its own site quotes), K&M Animal Care (4 stars, licensed for commercial dog daycare), Poos and Doodles (5 stars, licensed for both home boarding and day care), Harts and Hounds @ The Hayfields (5 stars, day care) and The Old Pastures Boarding Kennels (5 stars, kennels).

Buckinghamshire Council: a register that could not be read directly

Buckinghamshire Council does run its own online register, but the page returns only empty framework code to an automated check rather than the register itself, so it could not be read directly for this town. What is shown instead for its five businesses — The Puppy Dog Hotel, Schnoodles Doggy Daycare, Dogtopia of Amersham, Arklow Kennels and Friends Paw Life — comes from the animal-licensing.uk mirror, which republishes the council's licence number and expiry date for each. Because that page is a mirror rather than the council's own register, no star rating is shown for any of the five here, even though the mirror itself does carry one.

A licence that appears to have lapsed

Dogtopia of Amersham's licence, as read from the mirror, shows an expiry of 25 July 2026, a date that had already passed by the time this was checked on 19 September 2026, while the business's own site presents itself as currently open and taking bookings. This is flagged rather than assumed either way; ask the business directly for its current licence status before booking.

What to check yourself

For the five Buckinghamshire-licensed businesses, and for Dogtopia of Amersham specifically, the most direct check is to ask for the current licence number and contact Buckinghamshire Council's licensing team directly rather than relying on a mirror page or a claim made on a business's own site. For the seven businesses confirmed against Dacorum's own register, the star rating shown here is a council licence rating from a risk-based inspection, not a customer review, and Cosy Paws Dog Boarding's and Auntie Kelz Dog Home Boarder and Day Creche's newer licence numbers most likely reflect a routine renewal rather than any change in who runs the business.