Ministers consult on reform of dog control law

Control of dogs and improvements to current local authority enforcement powers are the subject of a new Scottish Government consultation.

It focuses on the Control of Dogs (Scotland) Act 2010, a member's bill introduced by Christine Grahame MSP, which gave powers to local authorities, in particular to impose dog control notices (DCNs) on dog owners who allowed their dogs to be out of control. A DCN contains a number of conditions aimed at requiring dog owners to take more responsibility for their dogs.

The regime was intended to be preventative by helping identify out of control dogs before they became dangerous. But as local authorities have become more used to using their powers under the Act, a number of issues have been raised, and this consultation looks at how the operational enforcement of the Act may be improved.

Wider changes to dog control law will be considered in the longer term in a separate review in 2020. The focus of this consultation is on practical measures that may improve the operational effectiveness of the operation of the 2010 Act with some, though not all, capable of being progressed without new legislation.

Issues raised by the present paper include:

• whether a new criminal offence of obstructing or failing to comply with an authorised officer in the course of their duties under the 2010 Act should be created;
• whether a national dog control notice database should be established, and if so, how it should operate;
• new powers to seize a dog pending a court considering a request for it to be destroyed;
• allowing fixed penalty notices to be available for breaches of dog control notices;
• whether Scottish Government statutory guidance on the operation of the 2010 Act should be updated; and
• whether the non-statutory 2016 protocol on how local authorities and Police Scotland might work more effectively together should be updated.

Click here to access the consultation. The deadline for responses is 15 January 2020.