How St Albans City and District 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. St Albans's page spans three licensing authorities by postcode district, though only two currently have a published, phone-verified business listed: St Albans City and District Council covers St Albans, Fleetville, Marshalswick, London Colney and Harpenden, and Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council covers Hatfield. Hertsmere Borough Council covers Radlett, but no business there currently has a confirmed phone number, so none is published for that area.
A genuine council-run register
St Albans City and District Council publishes its own current register directly, a PDF called 'Current Licences September 2026', linked from the council's own animal-welfare-and-business-licences page. It lists every licensed activity in one table — home boarding, day care, kennels, catteries, horse livery, breeding, pet sales and more — giving a licence number, trading name, star rating from 1 to 5, licence length, the number and type of animals covered, an address (a village or town name only for home boarding, a full street address for a kennels or day-care premises) and an expiry date. Sixteen of St Albans's eighteen listed businesses are checked directly against this register.
Star ratings, business by business
Of the sixteen St Albans City and District Council listings, nine hold the council's top rating of 5 stars — Albany Active Paws, Hayes Hounds Hotel, Zoomeez, Every K9 Active, St Albans Dog Walking & Boarding Company, Sarah's Dog Boarding, Elmtree Luxury Pet Hotel, Hounds on the Heath and Woof Woof Walk. Five hold 4 stars — Harley's Doggy Services, Marley & Me Doggy Day Care, Snouts, Lisa's Home Pet Care and Canine Karma. Two hold 3 stars — The Wag House and Croft Farm Kennels. A council star rating is the council's own inspection score, not a customer review, and is tied to how often the licence gets reinspected; treat it as a licence fact rather than a rating in the way a Google or Trustpilot score would be.
Where the register and a business's own site disagree
Two records here show a discrepancy worth knowing about. Marley & Me Doggy Day Care is filed on the register under the name 'Marley & Mr', which reads as a likely misprint given the licence number otherwise matches. Hounds on the Heath's licence is filed under a different address within the district to the one currently published on the business's own site, which gives a London Colney address; this page follows the business's own current site.
The two businesses with no star shown
Kate's K9s and Your Paws Pet Services, both in Hatfield, are licensed instead by Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council. That council keeps no animal-boarding register of its own on its website, so these two are checked against animal-licensing.uk, a third-party mirror rather than a council-run page. The mirror gives a licence number for each but not a reliable star rating, so no star is shown for either listing, even though the businesses are just as fully licensed as the sixteen with a star shown.
What a licence covers regardless of the star awarded
Whatever the star rating, every licence here has been assessed against the same 2018 regulations covering space, exercise, feeding, record-keeping and how many dogs may be kept at once, and the licensing council can revoke or refuse to renew a licence if a business falls below standard. A current licence, and a recent star rating where one is shown, are both worth asking to see directly rather than taking a business's word for either.