How to get planning permission for a cattery

Planning permission for a cattery is almost always needed, because cat boarding sits outside every class in the Use Classes Order and counts as a sui generis use. That matters twice over: there is no permitted change into it from a shop, an office or an agricultural building, and any later expansion of the operation is a fresh material change of use rather than an intensification you can argue about. The application itself turns on odour and waste rather than noise, which is the opposite of how boarding kennels are usually assessed.

Two separate consents are in play. Planning permission governs the use of the land. A licence under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 governs whether you may board cats at all, and the licensing officer will look at unit sizes, isolation facilities and record keeping. Neither consent grants the other. Apply for both, and design once to satisfy both.

Use class, and what the sui generis label costs you

Because cat boarding is sui generis, the application describes the use in your own words and the permission is drawn tightly around that description. A permission for a cattery does not carry a right to board dogs, run a grooming business or sell pet supplies from the site, even though all three feel adjacent commercially.

Write the description carefully. "Change of use of agricultural building to cat boarding cattery (sui generis) with associated parking" is better than "cattery", because it fixes the scope and reduces the chance of an enforcement argument three years later about the four dog pens at the back.

On a farm, the change is often from agricultural to sui generis, and that usually falls within rural diversification policy in the local plan and national policy support for sustainable rural enterprise. The same policy territory covers a fishing lake and angling facility, and the evidence base looks similar: the business case, the reuse of existing buildings, the effect on the character of the countryside.

In the Green Belt the position is harder. A new building for a cattery is inappropriate development unless it falls within one of the exceptions, and the reuse of a permanent and substantially built existing building is the route most schemes take. Say which exception you rely on, explicitly, in the planning statement.

Odour and waste, which is where these applications are decided

Cats produce a smaller volume of waste than dogs, but litter trays generate ammonia and the smell carries. Environmental health officers know this, and an application that says nothing about odour invites a holding objection.

The proportionate approach on a small site is a written odour management scheme rather than dispersion modelling. Set out the number of units, the litter regime and how often trays are changed, where soiled litter is stored between collections, the container type, the collection frequency and the contractor, and the separation distance between the store and the nearest residential window. Where a site is close to housing or the unit count is larger, a formal odour assessment using recognised methodology gives the officer something to condition against.

Ventilation deserves its own paragraph in the submission. Cattery units are normally naturally ventilated through mesh fronts and sneeze barriers, which is good for the cats and unhelpful for odour control at the boundary. Where mechanical extraction is used, state the discharge height, direction and any filtration, because that is what a condition will fix.

Soiled litter is a controlled waste and the duty of care under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 applies. Name the waste carrier and the disposal route in the application. Councils remember the ones that do.

Why noise is a different problem from kennels

A kennels application lives or dies on barking, and acoustic consultants model it as a series of impulsive events against background sound levels. Cats do not bark. The residual noise sources at a cattery are mechanical and human: extract fans, a heat pump or heating plant, doors, and vehicles arriving and leaving.

That changes the evidence. For plant, an assessment carried out on the BS 4142 approach comparing the specific sound level against the representative background is the usual requirement, and it is straightforward when the plant schedule is known. For vehicles, the issue is timing rather than level, and it is managed by conditioning drop-off and collection hours.

Where housing sits within earshot, a short noise impact assessment covering plant and vehicle movements is worth doing at application stage. A council usually expects a suitably qualified author for this kind of work, and professional review is strongly advised before anything is submitted.

One honest uncertainty: a small number of boarding cats do vocalise, particularly at night and when a cattery is at capacity. If your nearest neighbour is 15 metres away, expect the point to be raised and deal with it through unit siting and the position of the exercise runs rather than by claiming it never happens.

Siting, separation and boundary treatment

Separation distance does more work than any mitigation scheme. Where the site allows it, put the units at the far end of the plot from the nearest dwelling, with the litter store further still.

The detail officers look for on the block plan:

• Distance from each unit block and the waste store to the nearest residential boundary and habitable window, dimensioned.
• The direction of the prevailing wind relative to the units and the neighbours.
• Existing hedgerows and trees retained as screening, with any new planting shown as a landscape proposal rather than a note.
• Secure boundary treatment, because escape prevention is a licensing requirement and a planning consideration where the boundary adjoins a highway.
• Any external lighting, with a specification that avoids spill onto neighbouring land or habitat.

Lighting is the one people forget. Security lighting on a rural site after dark is a common source of objection and can also cause problems where bats commute along a hedgerow.

Traffic, parking and the holiday peak

Trip generation at a cattery is low in absolute terms and concentrated in a way that matters. The pattern is a handful of movements on a normal weekday and a pronounced peak at the start and end of school holidays and around Christmas and Easter.

Set out the arithmetic honestly: number of units, average stay, implied arrivals and departures per day at capacity, and the peak day. Provide enough on-site parking and turning that no vehicle reverses onto the highway, and show the swept path for a car with a trailer if the access is tight. On a rural lane, visibility splays at the access are usually the controlling issue, and the highway authority will want them shown against the measured speed of traffic rather than the posted limit.

A transport statement is proportionate for most catteries. A full transport assessment is only likely where the site is large or the access is onto a classified road with an existing safety record.

Licensing, welfare standards and how they shape the drawings

The 2018 regulations and the statutory guidance for providing boarding for cats set the standards the licensing officer applies: individual unit and exercise run dimensions, sleeping area provision, sneeze barriers between units, isolation accommodation, temperature control, and staffing ratios. Star ratings reward higher standards.

Design the building to the licensing standard first, then draw the planning application from it. Applicants who do it the other way round end up with a consented layout that cannot be licensed, and a second planning application to fix it.

An illustrative example

A redundant 180 m² steel-framed agricultural building on a smallholding is converted to 22 boarding units with a reception, an isolation unit and a laundry. The units face into the building, the exercise runs are on the elevation away from the two nearest cottages 60 metres to the west, and the litter store is a bunded, lidded enclosure by the yard entrance with fortnightly collection. Parking for four cars and a turning head sits inside the existing yard. The submission includes an odour management scheme, a plant noise assessment for the extract and heating, and a landscape plan retaining the roadside hedge. This example is illustrative.

Conditions on numbers, hours and expansion

Expect conditions limiting the maximum number of cats boarded at any time, restricting drop-off and collection hours, requiring the odour and waste management scheme to be implemented and maintained, controlling external lighting, and tying the use to the applicant or the land in some cases.

Read the numbers condition carefully before you accept it. A cap set at your opening capacity rather than your planned capacity is the single most common reason cattery operators find themselves applying again within two years. If you intend to grow, apply for the larger number now and offer a phasing condition instead.

Pull the planning statement together around the policy tests that apply to your site: rural diversification or employment policy, countryside character, residential amenity, highway safety and, where relevant, the Green Belt exception you rely on. Drafts from PlanScope are AI-assisted and structured to UK planning policy, with missing site facts flagged rather than invented. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority and the animal licensing team before relying on it. Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site needs.