Home Dog Boarding Licence Renewal Checklist: Records to Review Before You Apply

Check the dates first

Record the licence expiry date, your council’s renewal deadline and any time needed for inspections, documents or payment. Do not rely on a single calendar reminder. Use an earlier internal date for reviewing records and a later hard deadline for submitting the application.

Confirm the business profile still matches reality

• Licence holder and trading details.
• Premises address and contact information.
• Entered maximum dog capacity.
• Designated rooms and separation arrangements.
• Keyholder and emergency contacts.
• Registered veterinary contact details.
• Staff and household roles where relevant.

Sample complete stays

Pick several bookings from different parts of the licence period and retrieve the owner, dog, health evidence, trial, consent, room allocation, daily care, medication and incident history. Sampling real records reveals gaps much faster than confirming that every form template exists.

Review policies against actual practice

Cleaning, emergencies, disease control, medication, exercise, dog introductions and other procedures should describe what the business now does. If a policy was written before a room change or new workflow, update it and record the review date rather than leaving two competing versions.

Check training and competence evidence

Review staff training, refreshers and any learning that followed incidents or procedure changes. Where a qualification or course has a genuine expiry, make sure it remains current or that the renewal plan is recorded.

Check retained records and backups

Confirm that older records inside the minimum retention period have not been deleted during housekeeping. For electronic systems, verify that backups are current and that at least one restore or export test has been completed successfully.

Make a short renewal action list

Separate actions into “must resolve before submission,” “must resolve before inspection” and “operational improvement.” This prevents useful improvements from obscuring the small number of items that could actually hold up the renewal.