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

I live in Switzerland. Dog license is chf165 (£145) per year. A second dog costs twice the first dog. All dogs chipped and registered on a dog database. All dogs must wear a dog tag as well with the registration number. The fees pay for lots of bins and free bags in any location where dog walking is prevalent or encouraged.
Puppy school was mandatory up until recently, now it depends on the Kanton. Certain dogs need special licenses, and a few breeds are banned. Where I live, Staffies are banned, but the next town down the road, they are not. Usually dogs are banned from all parks where kids are likely to play. It’s a good system, still plenty of shit about though.

There would need to be changes in how insurance works
My young dog is insured. My old one is not.
The older ones insurance slowly climbed until we were looking at about 8,000 a year for cover of 3000. Some insurers also don't cover at all once you have certain breeds or certain medical issues. We once had an epileptic dog that was just point blank uninsurable (even when we weren't asking them to cover the epileptic stuff)

You could suggest the insurance like banned dogs get which is public liablity

I realise it probably sounds pedantic but I think it's worth highlighting there is a mass of laws/by laws etc currently available about dogs but just currently not well enforced.

Simply adding further laws doesn't help, it has to be about getting people to follow the ones already in place

-Local housing authorities can limit the number of dogs you have in council housing (as can landlords)

-Need a license if you advertise yourself as a breeder/ are considered to be making money from it or Have more than 3 litters a year. This comes with lots of requirements for breeders including needing to be linked with a vet. (Prison for 6 months and unlimited fines). They also need to be seen with mum and can't be resold other than by breeders under 6 months old, and can't be sold under 8 weeks old.

• all dogs need to be microchipped (and more crucially this needs to be up to date)fine 500 pounds

• in public all dogs must have a tag with owners name and address (phone number doesn't count, nor does qr tags) (fine up to 2000)

• dogs must be in control (including on your own property) if someone feels your dog could hurt them this can still be classed as out of control (unlimited fines, and prison sentences)

-councils can enforce on lead in things like parks, beaches, town centers using protection orders. Road traffic act covers dogs needing to be on short leads near roads (lots of different fine amounts)

-countryside code (fines up to 1000) covers dogs needing to be on leads on certain types of land, and on leads no more than 2m long near live stock

• fouling is covered by a specific animal droppings legislation as well as countryside code, asbos and other general laws ( fines of up to 1000)

-barking is covered under statutory nuisance

As well as laws around shock collars, welfare, tail docking, ear cropping, being suitably restrained in cars, banned breeds etc. There's also licencing requirements for dog walking, day care and boarding which is regularly flouted

The current legislation just needs to be used properly

YANBU to want dog licences but I can't see anything like what you're suggesting being brought in even with dog licence fees. There'd probably be more public cost trying to enforce dog licences and payment of fees and fines, and councils are so underfunded anyway.

I agree though, the dog mess problem is disgusting. I also think dog owners should have to have pet insurance and do puppy training classes but again, how do you really enforce that.

Technically this falls under dangerous dogs already
People only have to fear harm from your dog rather than come to harm especially of your dog isn't on lead and recallable

Can i just also add that a £1000 fine for allowing your mutt to run at or jump up at anyone, doubling every time you let it happen.

Exactly.
Trying to set up street hosing isn't getting to the core of the problem. It's actually more likely that people would think fuck it, hosers are coming later, no need to pick up.
Clamping down on people who decide to let their bitch have a litter for "fun" or to make a few quid, stopping designer puppies arriving from abroad and puppy mills. We need more information out there so the public understand what they are doing and make better choices.
I absolutely would support a licence and would pay for one, but a license will still be fallible and certainly won't generate the income to provide dog poo services.
Like someone else said, it's the mindset of the population which is fucked. The litter, the graffiti, the dog shit....

I think it's a bigger issue. There's a swathe of the population that just doesn't care about anything if it doesn't affect them and don't take responsibility for their actions or lack thereof. It's why they throw litter out of their cars - someone else can pick it up. Dog shits in the street - not their problem - they wont step in it so someone else can deal with that. They are the ones that park their cars obstructively, speed, queue jump etc etc, but will moan if they don't think they are getting what they are 'due' from Government. There's a lack of understanding how you are supposed to behave to enable society to work. Entitlement at its' worst.

"However she was born in cupboard, her parents are siblings, the owners didn't know how many dogs they had because the breeding was so rampant. They were giving them out to friends etc, all underage, unchipped, no form of vet oversight. They were already breeching how many dogs they were allowed in the property, not getting the dogs adequate medical treatment etc but had never been prosecuted. Some of the adult dogs were clearly neglected but still walked in public.
Eventually one of the owners ended up having an ambulance called and the whole sorry saga was uncovered
There's thousands of dogs (and probably her siblings) that don't exist on any system at all."

It's this kind of situation, and similar, is the source of the problem - the dog crap, vile as it is, is a symptom of it. Too many dogs, too easy to get a dog. I think this is where the problem needs to be nipped in the bud.

We could start by making it as difficult as possible to breed and sell dogs - the law around puppy farms could be tightened up as a start. I also think there should be compulsory sterilization of dogs that are not owned by registered breeders. Maybe the dog license could be 2 tiered - a lower amount for sterilised dogs, a more substantial amount for non-sterilised dogs. Breeders would then be paying towards a problem they are helping to cause.

There are always going to be people who manage to avoid paying for licenses, avoid being prosecuted etc but it doesn't mean we just throw our hands up in horror, say its hopeless and not try to do anything about the problem. We have better technology these days - dog wardens could be empowered for example to scan dogs for microchips that could be coded to include information about the breeders name - this would alert them to "back street" breeders
who could be prosecuted. If the dog isn't chipped or the chip isn't up to date with the required information then the owner is fined & the dog seized.

Fines should be bigger - £100 for letting your dog fouled the footpath is paltry. In Singapore the fine is £600. The fine for having a dog off a lead in a public place in Singapore is £3000. There's no point having fines if they are not acting as a deterrent. Revenue from fines to go towards running the dog wardens service.

I think this is true.
We already have legal support to fine people on littering, fouling, dogs out of control and are able to set up areas of dogs on leads.

Ime the local park to me that is dog on leads is mostly enforced by other dog walkers who get irritated by it.

We also need to find a way to get people fully on board with the current dog laws. It's hard to reports a neighbour churning out puppies, or to leave a pup behind when the conditions are bad or the mum isnt there and you can see laws are being broken. Lots of people currently make the decisions to lift the dog out but the circle continues

It does seem odd that dogs are allowed to wee against walls, trees etc which will damage them. I guess wasn’t an issue when so few dogs but it is odd that we got used to it

We need a cultural change in social behaviour and assumptions about private pets and other things such as throwing litter in the streets. I don't know why we don't have a prohibition on toileting dogs in the streets; it's just awful to have this on the pavements and in front of people's houses in built-up areas. Why take dogs to the high street full of people and children having to see dogs using it as a toilet? We need to say that it isn't acceptable and that it is a responsibility of private owners to manage and deal with and not make it a public problem; they should toilet their dogs in their own property, house or garden or only in designated areas in the public space. Don't tell me dogs can't be trained or controlled. I saw a man the other day who let his dog go off the pavement and onto my neighbour's land in front of the house and do its business there. Utterly brazen. Others are on their phone and pay no attention to the dog. I saw an elderly woman sitting in a car in the high street open the door and dump a drinks can into the road as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Licensing may help but it would have to be enforced. Many things are not, even when illegal - see cycling on pavements etc. We have people who ticket cars for illegal parking but why couldn't they deal with other things as well? They could but they don't. No one bothers to try to improve anything and people don't care.

The dog licence fee would just about cover the cost of running the dog license fee admin and management. If that. I don't know where this imaginary huge profit idea is coming from. It's not going to pay for thousands of full time dog wardens to police the streets daily in addition to all the related costs. Add in the OP wanting nightly street hosing by another huge group of employees paid for by this mystical money producing license, DNA testing and a database....never going to happen. There would still be dog shit, there would still be owners buying unlicensed puppies and never registering them with any kind of vet or society. What the answer is I don't know, but we can't live in a dream world.

My town center and seafront (and I'm assuming lots of other places) do have fines for this. We also have a park where you are fined for off lead dogs.

It's all currently possible just not enforced well

My dogs rarely go anywhere near a built up area, they are working dogs an live in fields but i would be more than happy if an annual licence was introduced. Too many people have dogs that they can't/won't control and can't/won't clean up after. I also think extending leads should be banned and really heavy fines introduced for for allowing dogs off leads in public places, £100 fine for not clearing up after your dog and £250 for not having your dog on a lead would be good.

Can you imagine the headlines, first they took our WFA and now the elderly are going to have their dogs put down as they can't afford the licence. The press would have a field day.

Anything that encourages people to stay away from vets, trainers, socialising etc will encourage an explosion in dog bites/risk to the public. There is a reason why vets tend to refuse to report banned breeds, why illegal immigrants don't get reported for going to a+e because it leads to suffering and cruelty

That's what would have to be avoided

There are already rules around breeding, Lucy's law, cropping, microchipping and licences for over a certain no of puppies

This is rarely enforced

You'll find loads of "illegal" puppies on any puppy advertising site already outside of the law. I could tell you my neighbour is breeding puppies from awful parents, that are in bad conditions but unlikely to be massively illegal and I can tell you I'm from a community where people wouldn't engage in reporting

How would you enforce it? Would you rely on people reporting their own puppies as coming from somewhere dodgy?

If you don't assume they will go to the vet, or training or be kc registered how would you find out when dogs are born? It's like trying to identify child neglect cases by require people to register for NCT classes and then following up at a baby sensory class. Huge parts of the population don't access them, and people who are struggling especially dont

The thing is though that the reason it has to be witnessed is that it has to be beyond all reasonable doubt. That's because it's an offence under the Antisocial Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014. Being witnessed means that's established, and because it's an absolute offence (ignorance is not a defence) a DPN can be issued.

If you just collect samples from the street, within 12 months I guarantee someone would claim it was planted by someone with an axe to grind (doesn't matter if they can't prove it, doubt has been introduced) or that it's cross-contamination (dog weed on the poo). Completely unenforceable.

This is a great example of how things are enforced and the problem with things that can only be enforced by spot checks

You'll find lots of cars are taxed, mot'd because this can be picked up clearly by cameras, and police driving past your house can immediately see it.

What you'll find though is a massive percentage of drivers being uninsured, not having licences, disqualified etc. Because that can't be automatically checked

In order to have a car you have to drive it past cameras and likely store it on the road so people make it so it scans OK unless they are stopped

You don't in order to have a dog.

I go out one Sunday a month litter picking with a group of volunteers. Not my litter. There’s a suggestion that’s feasible.

It was 37½p for a licence and cost more than that to administer. It should have been massively increased in price rather than scrapped.

A mechanism to add it to their council tax which results in action against them if unpaid ?