A cattery: licensing, odour and neighbour amenity

A boarding cattery needs cattery planning permission and a separate animal activities licence, and the two are decided by different teams on different criteria. Planning decides whether a commercial boarding use belongs on that land, and sets conditions on numbers, hours, access and waste. The licence, issued under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, governs accommodation, staffing and animal welfare, and the licensing team will normally expect planning permission to be in place first. Catteries are a far easier amenity case than kennels, and the application should say why.

Boarding as a use in its own right

Animal boarding does not fall within any class of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 as amended, so a cattery is treated as a sui generis use. That has two consequences worth understanding before you start.

There is no permitted change into or out of the use, so a future switch to kennels, to a grooming business or to storage all need fresh applications. And the permission will be drafted tightly around what you described, which cuts both ways: it protects you from a council later arguing the use has intensified beyond what was approved, and it limits your flexibility.

Scale matters for whether permission is needed at all. Boarding a neighbour's cat occasionally is not development. A purpose-built block of twenty pens with a reception area, advertised and charged for, plainly is, and the grey area in between turns on whether the activity has become a separate commercial use of the land rather than something incidental to the dwelling.

Where the cattery is proposed on a farm holding, it sits in rural diversification policy. The National Planning Policy Framework (August 2026 edition) chapter on supporting a prosperous rural economy favours the sustainable growth of rural businesses and the reuse of existing buildings, and a conversion of a redundant farm building is a much stronger starting point than a new building in open countryside. The same policy ground supports other diversification, as our note on wedding and events venues in rural buildings explains.

Planning permission and the animal activities licence

Keep the two applications separate in your head and sequence them deliberately.

Planning covers the principle of the use, the siting and appearance of buildings and runs, the access and parking, hours of operation, drainage, waste storage and the effect on neighbouring amenity. Conditions are enforceable through the planning enforcement process.

The licence covers the accommodation standards: unit sizes, sneeze barriers between units, temperature and ventilation, impervious and cleanable surfaces, isolation facilities, record keeping, staffing ratios and insurance. It carries a star rating, and the duration of the licence varies with that rating.

Apply for planning permission first. A licensing officer asked to license a use that has no planning consent will usually decline, and building to licensing standards before you have permission risks an expensive building you cannot operate.

One overlap to design for. The licence expects impervious surfaces that can be washed down, and planning and drainage care about where that wash-down water goes. Resolve it once, at the drawing stage.

Odour from litter and waste, and its management

Odour is the complaint most often anticipated and least often substantiated for a cattery. Cats use litter trays, the waste volume per animal is small, and a well-run facility with daily tray changes and sealed external storage produces little detectable odour beyond a few metres.

Say that plainly, and then show the management. The submission should describe the litter type and the change frequency, the internal waste holding arrangement, the external bin store with its capacity, the collection arrangement and frequency, and the cleaning regime for the units themselves.

A formal odour assessment is rarely proportionate at this scale. Where the site adjoins dwellings closely, or where the council's environmental health officer asks, the ventilation design and waste storage detail usually answers the point without modelling. A Ventilation and Extraction Statement covering the air change rate, the intake and discharge positions and the relationship of the discharge to nearby windows is the proportionate document.

Position the bin store on the drawing, away from the boundary and under cover. An uncovered bin area next to a neighbour's garden is the detail that generates the objection.

Drainage, disinfection and surface water

This is the technical issue that catches cattery applications, and it is about the disinfectant rather than the volume.

Wash-down water carrying disinfectant must not reach a surface water drain or a watercourse. The internal floors need a trapped gully connected to the foul system, with the connection shown on the drainage layout.

Where there is no mains sewer the problem sharpens. Disinfectants kill the biological process in a septic tank or a package treatment plant, so the usual answer is a sealed holding tank for wash-down water with tankered removal, or a dilution and settlement arrangement agreed with the Environment Agency, keeping the treatment plant for welfare facilities only. A Foul Sewage Assessment should set out the population equivalent for the staff and visitor facilities, the separate wash-down route, the tank capacity and the emptying arrangement.

Surface water from new roofs, runs and parking is a separate calculation. Infiltration where ground conditions allow, with a greenfield run-off rate as the target and percolation test results to support any soakaway design.

Get the ground conditions tested early. An impermeable clay site changes both the drainage design and the cost.

Construction, ventilation and outdoor runs

Catteries are typically single storey blocks of individual units, each with a sleeping area and an attached exercise run, separated by solid partitions, with a covered corridor along the front.

Planning looks at this as a building in the landscape. Scale and roof form matched to any adjoining farm buildings, dark recessive colours for cladding and mesh, and planting to soften the long elevation all help. Welded mesh runs with a galvanised finish read as industrial from a distance, so a powder-coated dark finish is worth specifying on the drawings rather than leaving to the contractor.

Ventilation has to deliver air changes without draughts across the units, and the licence standards drive that. Mechanical ventilation brings plant noise, which brings the next issue.

Keep the runs away from the boundary that faces dwellings. The practical separation is more use than any acoustic specification.

Access and visitor parking on a rural lane

Visitor traffic to a cattery is low in total and concentrated at the start and end of school holidays. That pattern is easy to assess and easy to understate.

Show the parking spaces dimensioned, the turning area so vehicles leave in forward gear, and the visibility splays measured against surveyed vehicle speeds rather than the posted limit. Where the access is an existing farm entrance, expect the highway authority to ask for it to be improved, surfaced for the first few metres and given a splay it has never had.

A short Transport Statement is proportionate. Quantify the trips honestly by day type, including staff, visitors and the vet, and deal with the holiday peak rather than averaging it away.

Signage on the lane needs its own thought. An advertisement consent may be required, and a sign in a National Landscape or conservation area attracts more scrutiny than the cattery itself.

Conditions on numbers, hours and waste storage

Expect, and ideally propose, a condition set along these lines.

A maximum number of cats boarded at any one time, which is the condition that defines the use and prevents arguments about intensification later. Hours during which animals may be dropped off or collected. A restriction to cats only, which stops drift into kennels and is something neighbours ask for explicitly. Approval of the waste storage and collection arrangements before first use. Approval and retention of landscaping with a replacement clause. No external lighting other than as approved, which matters in a dark rural location. And approval of the final drainage details including the wash-down route.

Noise conditions are sometimes imposed on the ventilation plant, and where any mechanical plant is proposed a Noise Impact Assessment assessing the rating level against measured background under the relevant British Standard is worth providing up front. Councils expect a suitably qualified author for acoustic work and professional review is strongly advised.

Negotiate the maximum number against your business plan with headroom, because increasing it later needs a section 73 application and a fresh look at parking and drainage.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site needs.