Sorry all, its been a hell of a day and a half!
Back now though to tell you why I asked.
Since April 2008 the Police have had no responsibility to take in stray dogs except for dangerous dogs - this all passed over to local councils. You may (and imho should) report to the Police a dog you've found and ask them to record it but they're under no obligation to do so. A council has an obligation to record a dog seized by their officers (ie handed in as stray or collected from the street) but not to make a record of any lost dog reported to them. You must report a stray you've taken in to the council. The RSPCA will not collect a stray from you and will tell you to call the council.
Councils generally don't have a 24 hour, 7 day a week dog warden service - I've yet to find one which does. Within office hours you are required to call the DW, who should collect the dog and take him to a pound (most often just one per county). It must be pointed out here (again, sorry for the soapbox!), that a pound only has a legal duty to keep that dog for 7 days, after which they can, and many do, put him to sleep.
Out of hours you have a choice - take him to an "acceptance point" if the Council has one, as they are not obliged to have an out of hours acceptance point, it's just subject to Government guidelines (not funny if you have no transport/its far away/both), keep him, either permanantly/until the owner requests him back, in which case you must hand him over, keep him until the DW service is open or.... and members of the public have actually been told this by Councils... put him back on the street.
This is hardly surprising as the Government allocated councils £4 million between them all, to be spent over 3 years, with a view to facilitating the new legislation but did not specify how that should be spent or make it the case in law that it should be spent on facilitating this new legislation at all. Your council's allocation could have been spent on paperclips for all you or I know! In 1998 the Police's lowest estimate for providing their former stray service was £11 million PA, a full £7M less than the Govt provided for 3 years cover, to put in place a whole new service which ideally should be comparable or better than the Polices, but clearly falls far short of it. Yet why? The Police were already set up for it, with Police stations and kennels in most towns and with someone on site 24 hours in most too.
You do have the right to keep the dog but must relinquish him if the owner turns up. The Council may only refuse you this opportunity if they have reasonable grounds to indicate that the dog would not be adequately cared for. Many councils don't know/deny this. This happened to me - I challenged them to meet my own dogs and prove that I was unable to care for a stray I'd found (knowing what I do about pounds and being unwilling to let this very old dog go into one). They became very unpleasant until I called in a favour from an RSPCA inspector who got one of their solicitors to call the council and read them the riot act (and boy did he!).
Anyway, my question arose from reading on here about someone saying that they'd call the RSPCA about finding a stray dog. I realised that some people may not be aware of how to deal with such a situation and what a sorry state England's DW service is in. By law every council must have a DW, but he/she need not have that title nor does that need to be his/her main task. Often when this is the case the post holder is also the pest controller.... doesn't that say it all!
Sadly in my experience councils view dog wardens a necessary financial burden, way down on the list of priorities, hence the lack of 24 hour service. You do get the odd decent head of department - one small Northern county council's head of Environmental Health and DW's boss is spitting feathers at this law but still can't get the big bosses to fund an out of hours service. Their strays' acceptance point is 60 miles across countryside from the county's far border. Imagine being told to take a dog there after 5pm with no transport!
So what to do if you take in a stray without a tag?
Report to the council as your legal obligation.
Take to a vet/call your local rescue to see if they will scan for a chip (some rescues have the kit, some don't, worth calling before turning up).
Report to the Police in case the owner has called them and ask them to log it (you may get an "Oh well, if you really want us to I suppose we can" response - I have!). Especially do this out of hours if you cannot contact the DW, to cover your own ass as well as help the dog.
Ask the DW to collect if you can contact him - but remember that most often the dog will go to a pound, not a rescue and that he may be put to sleep after 7 days.
Take him to an acceptance point out of hours if you can, remembering the above.
And if you want to hold on to him, remember that you can, as long as you are willing to agree to relinquish him to the owner should he turn up, as is your legal obligation. By law if you opt to keep him you must retain him for 28 days. Because he is never yours but the owner can reclaim him at any time you are thus unable to give him to anyone else effectively.
If you're very lucky and have a local rescue with a no-kill policy and space they may be able to take him and will inform the DW accordingly. In most cases the DW will then allow the rescue to hold the dog under the same laws and obligations which the public have.
So the next straw poll is.... is this not the biggest, saddest and most backward step in a supposedly animal-loving nation for a bloody long time?
I vote a resounding YES!