We are seeking your views on the government’s proposed implementation of penalty notices for animal health and welfare offences in England only.
In April 2022, the Animals (Penalty Notices) Act “the Act” was passed in Parliament. The Act provides the powers to introduce penalty notices in England for relevant animal health and welfare offences (and in Wales for offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991).
The Act states that the Secretary of State may through regulations, prescribe offences as relevant offences for the purposes of this Act. The Act requires the Secretary of State to make regulations to ‘switch on’ the penalty notices option for relevant offences under the primary legislation listed in the Act itself and all secondary legislation made under those primary legislation.
We are consulting on two elements:
We believe that these new and proportionate financial penalties for animal health and welfare offences could add to, and complement, the current enforcement regime to support early behaviour change to promote compliance and better protect the nation’s animals.
How to respond
Our preferred way of receiving responses is through the Citizen Space platform. If you are unable to use Citizen Space, you can download the consultation documents and return your response via email to ahwenforcement@defra.gov.uk
Confidentiality and data protection
A summary of responses to this consultation will be published on the government website at: www.gov.uk/defra. An annex to the consultation summary will list all organisations that responded but will not include personal names, addresses or other contact details.
Defra may publish the content of your response to this consultation to make it available to the public without your personal name and private contact details (for example home address, email address).
If you click on ‘Yes’ in response to the question asking if you would like anything in your response to be kept confidential, you are asked to state clearly what information you would like to be kept confidential and explain your reasons for confidentiality. The reason for this is that information in responses to this consultation may be subject to Page 5 of 32 release to the public or other parties in accordance with the access to information law (these are primarily the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIRs), the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA)). We have obligations, mainly under the EIRs, FOIA and DPA, to disclose information to particular recipients or to the public in certain circumstances. In view of this, your explanation of your reasons for requesting confidentiality for all or part of your response would help us balance these obligations for disclosure against any obligation of confidentiality. If we receive a request for the information that you have provided in your response to this consultation, we will take full account of your reasons for requesting confidentiality of your response, but we cannot guarantee that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances.
If you click on ‘No’ in response to the question asking if you would like anything in your response to be kept confidential, we will be able to release the content of your response to the public, but we won’t make your personal name and private contact details publicly available.
There may be occasions when Defra will share the information you provide in response to the consultation, including any personal data, with external analysts. This is for the purposes of consultation response analysis and provision of a report of the summary of responses only.
This consultation is being conducted in line with the Cabinet Office “Consultation Principles” which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consultation-principles-guidance.
Please find our latest privacy notice uploaded as a related document alongside our consultation documents. If you have any comments or complaints about the consultation process, please address them to: consultation.coordinator@defra.gov.uk.
Duration
This consultation will run for 8 weeks. The consultation opened on 25 May 2023 and closes on 20 July 2023. Unfortunately, any responses received after this date will not be analysed. To ensure your response is included in the analysis, please consider responding online via Citizen Space.
For further information on how Defra collects, processes and stores our data, please see the consultation privacy notice, saved on Citizen Space.