To think it is long overdue that we brought in dog licencing

OP is suggesting dog wardens paid for by the licence fee.

@Onleemoi
Thank you for litter picking. Our local Wombles pick up dozens of bags every week and now we’ve recently lost 25% of all bins there will probably be more.
I don’t litter pick but I never litter and taught dc not to.
I don’t understand the mentality of littering whether it be dog turds or general litter.

On my monthly litter picks it takes roughly 30 minutes to fill one bin liner. I do 2 hours along with at least 4 others. There’s never nothing to collect. Dog’s mess isn’t on the same scale at all.

During the first 15 minutes of walking my dog today I counted 32 pieces of litter, 2 vapes, broken glass from a vodka bottle and a car number plate. I also saw one dog turd on the pavement and one used poo bag hanging from a tree.
Humans are the problem with all of these but dog waste is a lesser problem than general litter.

I forgot. In Switzerland chf5 million mandatory liability insurance to own a dog. This bit isn’t policed, but it easily could be.
Most people have liability and legal insurance here anyway, because it makes sense.

I'm sure all these employees will be thrilled to add scraping up random bits of dog shit to their job roles 😂 Who is funding the DNA testing process for all these random evidence turds? Do you have any idea of how much that would cost and the failure rate? What are you testing them against as no database is currently established. How many case of testing fox and cat poo do you think would happen? It would be like throwing money into the dog shit bins that people fail to use. No amount of succesful fines would cover any of this.

but then you would get some that see the shortage and illegal breed other dogs to sell to those people so the end result is no different

You can’t make people be better, though. Our local park is divided in half with really clear signs that one half is dogs on leads only, or pay a fine – gets completely ignored. People let their dog in the children’s playground and do an innocent “Oh, do you mind? I suppose I could tie him outside if you really can’t bear it…” as if we’re the weird ones, despite new signage forbidding it (the most our council will do is loads of signs, heaven forfend they enforce it). There’s dog poo EVERYWHERE particularly on the streets to the school run and in the back paths of the park (fewer witnesses to shame them into picking up).

You can reduce the number of dogs available for the lazy bad owners to access.

I live in a place which has dog licenses and have also got caught not having a license. I got caught because they do random spot checks. They knock on the door and of course most dogs bark when someone knocks on their door so they hear barking and oh, no dogs registered at this address. Had to pay the fee plus a late fee and submit all paperwork by 7pm that day or face a 5K fine or something ridiculous. Just in case anyone was wondering how licensing systems work. It doesn’t pay for anything in the OP though, it just makes sure that the population is vaccinated, certain breeds are charged more to discourage people from owning them and dog s which are not neutered/spayed also cost more.

Exactly this. 👆
Not only is OP BU, she's also naive in the extreme.

hardly, more like better owners

There’s just too many dogs; what’s needed is a cull.

we need Ai surveillance systems that use facial recognition that's linked to a database so when dog owners dont pick up the mess then they can be auto fined for it

We used to have dog licences, I remember going to the post office to pay for it it was abolished in 1987 as it was to expensive to administer and replaced by other legislation around dog control orders, which are now used for dogs on leads and dogs excluded notices, and no doubt dog fouling

Its highly unlikely it will come back. How will be be administered? How much would that cost? Millions. So any dog licence fee will be used to pay for administration rather than anything else, and you can bet your bottom dollar the majority won’t but one, then you spend millions chasing them

Councils already employ Civil Enforcement Officers to deal with parking and littering. Issue them with some gloves and evidence bags and they can add this to their duties.

The worst culprit for not picking up dog shit around here was a very well to do elderly women walking her Yorkies. I'm sure she'd have paid the license fee (even though over 65s are actually excluded from paying) but it didn't stop her blatantly avoiding her dogs shitting.
Just as I've been saying, even if you're not going to crack the toughest nuts a scheme can still make a difference.

In my line of work, it's conventional wisdom that pursuing every refusal to pay would cost more than it brings in. Therefore the revenue protection approach is to have just enough of a deterrence to stop things turning into anarchy.

Same by me - it is disgusting.
You can see where it has been stood in and walked. It's a health hazard

It won't. Fines won't cover a fraction of the costs involved unfortunately. How many fines do you really think would be handed out? How are they catching people? "Properly enforced" involves catching people in the act -unlikely -or DNA testing or which as described by another poster in this thread is not only very expensive but unreliable. If you fined people £10,000 it still wouldn't even cover the wage bill needed for thousands of dogs wardens across the UK. Say you paid £25,000 for 500 dog wardens (not near enough for the whole UK to be enforced, but an example). That's 12.5 million pounds. There is absolutely no way on earth that amount would be raised from fines alone, and that's not even factoring in the numerous other costs involved.

Sorry, you're quite right - I do agree that insurance and licensing are two separate issues and I wasn't actually talking about insurance at all, but I see I have accidentally put "insure" when I meant "licence". My bad!

In answer to your second point, it's true that lots of dogs don't often see a vet, which is why this would be just one string to the licensing bow, along with dog warden, spot checks, complaints from neighbours etc. I too would hate to see dogs not receiving veterinary care because the dogs' owners were worried about the dogs not being licenced, but that's why I suggested a two week grace period when they could obtain a licence without being penalised.

No excuse not to have public liability insurance. Vet fees/mortality etc up to you. Public liability should be compulsory.

If someone is bitten by your dog, or knocked off their bike, or their livestock is injured they should be able to claim compensation for their injuries/losses. Too many people fail to insure their dogs and it is irresponsible, antisocial and unacceptable.

The money will be raised from fines if it's properly enforced.

The thing is dog licenses do not equal dog shit problem solved. The two don't really go together. If we do £12 a year like NI the vast majority of people, bad or good owners, can afford to pay it easily.
The worst culprit for not picking up dog shit around here was a very well to do elderly women walking her Yorkies. I'm sure she'd have paid the license fee (even though over 65s are actually excluded from paying) but it didn't stop her blatantly avoiding her dogs shitting. She only stopped because she died.
Enforcement would help obviously, but the resources aren't there. Wardens aren't ever going to come and patrol the tiny village I live in -we don't even have a bus service.
I think it's just going to have to be a mindset shift. Communities coming together to try and tackle their particular area. We've had some success with "free" dog poo bags (provided by villagers, we leave the odd roll on top of bins for people to take). I buy a box per month and donate a roll or two from that. It's also frequently mentioned in the newsletter and the kids at school put up posters.

Lots of dogs aren't insured for valid reason. I've got one insured, but the other one got old and his insurance sky rocketed to be more per year than the coverage, equally I've had un insurable dogs due to health conditions

A huge portion of dogs aren't regularly attending vets. Besides you don't want a situation where dogs aren't being taken for medical care because someone is concerned about licencing

I know dog licences were unenforceable in the 1970s but I'm sure that, with computers and the Internet, it must be easier now.

If dog licences were issued to a particular address, saved on a database accessible to police, vets, dog wardens etc, it would surely be possible to check that dogs attending vets/ reported to dog wardens by concerned neighbours/involved in nuisance behaviour were licenced. If dogs were found to be unlicensed, there could be a 14 day grace period for them to arrange a licence, but if nothing was done, the owner could be fined and the dog seized. The people who don't insure their dogs are unlikely to be good, responsible owners.

Retired people would get a discount and the owners of unneutered dogs would pay twice the fee that the owners of neutered dogs would pay.

I say this as a dog lover and dog owner, albeit one who feels that the threshold for dog ownership is far too low at the moment and ultimately dogs and society at large would benefit from more regulation.

@HellsBalls that system sounds extremely sensible - mandatory puppy school is a great idea too. We have far too many feckless dog nutters treating their dog like a toddler and affording it human level rights

Agree with all of this. In my version of events dog licenses operate on a points based system and if your dog attacks someone, or is otherwise anti social you get points and a fine. Too many points bye bye dog license.

Nearly stepped in dog shit 3 times on my walk into town this evening