Information relating to dogs found within district but owner outside the district
Request received 23 June 2026
This FOI only relates to circumstances where a dog is found within your district, but information suggests a potential owner/premises outside of your administrative boundary.
Enquiries Outside the Authority Area
1a) How many occasions were there where officers responsible for stray dog functions needed to make enquiries outside your authority's district/borough area in order to identify, trace, or contact a potential owner of a stray dog where a dog has been found within your district/borough but information received suggests that the dog owner resides over the border and into another local authority area.
1b) If exact figures are not recorded, please indicate which of the following best reflects your authority's experience:
Frequency of enquiries made outside of your area?
Please indicate
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Frequently
Please indicate whether such investigations are conducted in person (officer visits the address) or writes to the individual. This assumes that email/telephone contacts are not held within in a microchip data set. Please indicate which best describes your approach.
We write a letter to the potential owner’s address?
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Frequently
An officer visits the potential owners address in person to enquire as to potential ownership.
Never
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Frequently
1.1 *If ‘Never’ please set out any alternative steps that would be taken to reunite the dog with its owner (again, this assumes that information has been provided to the local authority which suggests the address of a potential owner).
4. Cross-Boundary Cooperation
a) Does your authority have any formal or informal arrangements with neighbouring authorities
regarding enquiries, investigations, or visits connected with stray dogs that originate from
outside your area?
b) If such arrangements exist, please provide copies of any relevant policies, protocols,
guidance documents, service specifications, or operational procedures that govern these
activities.
Responded 21 July 2026
1a. No exact figure recorded
1b. Rarely / Rarely / Rarely
1.1We are currently contracted with Wood Green animal shelter which is where we take our
stray dogs. If we take a stray into them, it is them who would make the enquiries with the CHIP
information, it is very rare that we would make enquiries ourselves so it might be worth asking
Wood Green how many of the strays taken in are from outside the area but I think the numbers
would be very low as dogs tend to be found stray within the district that they have come from.
4a. We might contact another district if we needed them to go make enquiries at an address to
locate an owner, if it was to save us time travelling to another area, but this would be rare.
4b. n/a