How to start a dog walking business in the UK (2026)

1Do you need a licence to walk dogs?

No, not to walk them. No part of the UK has a national licence for dog walking. The licensing rules in England specifically leave out walkers and sitters who look after a dog in its own home. [GOV.UK day care guidance]

You do need a licence once dogs stay with you. If you add boarding to your walks, even in your own home, it is licensed everywhere in the UK, and in England so is day care. The rules differ by nation:

• England: home boarding, kennels and dog day care need a council licence under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. A licence lasts one, two or three years depending on your star rating, and boarding without one can mean an unlimited fine. [GOV.UK]
• Scotland and Wales: boarding, including home boarding, is licensed by your council under the Animal Boarding Establishments Act 1963, renewed every year. [GOV.UK]
• Northern Ireland: boarding kennels are licensed by DAERA rather than the council, and every dog owner in NI also needs a dog licence. [GOV.UK]

Councils set their own fees. As a guide, Shropshire charges £370.92 to apply for a new home boarding licence plus £191.08 when it is granted, and Aberdeenshire charges £296 for a new boarding licence. [Shropshire Council] [Aberdeenshire Council]

2How many dogs you can walk at once

There is no national limit. Councils in England and Wales can use a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) to cap the number of dogs one person has with them, and GOV.UK says this applies to professional dog walkers too. Breaking a PSPO can mean a fixed penalty of £100, or a fine of up to £1,000 in court. [GOV.UK] The Crime and Policing Act 2026 raises the maximum fixed penalty to £500 once that part comes into force.

Some examples of how different the local rules are:

• Wandsworth: four dogs per person, or up to six with a professional dog walking licence (from £77.90 a year). [Wandsworth Council]
• Tower Hamlets: four dogs, or six with a £240 a year licence. [Tower Hamlets Council]
• Rushcliffe (Nottinghamshire): six dogs on open public land, four in three named parks. [Rushcliffe Borough Council]
• Hampstead Heath: four dogs, and professional walkers need a licence from the City of London. [City of London]
• The Royal Parks: commercial walkers need a licence (£300 plus VAT a year, £225 plus VAT for Richmond and Bushy), at least £2 million of public liability cover, and may walk no more than four dogs. [The Royal Parks]

Before your first group walk: search your council's website for “PSPO dogs” and check the rules for every park and beach on your routes. Limits can differ between parks in the same borough.

3Registering with HMRC

Most walkers start as sole traders. You can earn up to £1,000 a year from trading tax free under the trading allowance. Above that, you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October after the end of the tax year you started. Started trading in the 2025/26 tax year? Your deadline is 5 October 2026. [GOV.UK]

For the 2026/27 tax year:

• Personal allowance: £12,570, then income tax at 20%, 40% and 45% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own bands, from 19% up to 48%. [GOV.UK] [Scottish rates]
• National Insurance: Class 4 at 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% above that. You no longer have to pay Class 2. [GOV.UK]
• VAT: you only have to register if your turnover goes over £90,000 in a rolling 12 months, which most solo walkers never reach. [GOV.UK]

Making Tax Digital is arriving. Sole traders with qualifying income over £50,000 have had to keep digital records and send quarterly updates since April 2026. The threshold falls to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028. Qualifying income is your turnover before expenses, not your profit, so a busy walker can cross it sooner than expected. [GOV.UK]

4Insurance

The only insurance the law requires is employers' liability, and only once you employ someone. It must cover at least £5 million, and going without can cost £2,500 for every day you are not insured. [GOV.UK]

Everything else is optional in law but expected in practice:

• Public liability, if a dog in your care injures someone or damages property. Policies commonly offer £1 million to £5 million, and the Royal Parks licence requires at least £2 million.
• Care, custody and control, if a dog is hurt, falls ill or goes missing while you are responsible for it.
• Key cover, for replacing locks if you lose a client's keys.

5DBS checks

A criminal record check is not a legal requirement for dog walking, but clients are giving you their keys and access to their home, and a basic check is a cheap way to reassure them. You can apply for your own:

• England and Wales: basic DBS check, £21.50, applied for online. [GOV.UK]
• Scotland: Level 1 disclosure, £25. [mygov.scot]
• Northern Ireland: AccessNI basic check, £16. [nidirect]

6Client data and the ICO fee

Names, addresses, phone numbers and key safe codes are personal data under UK GDPR. Most businesses that hold client details electronically must pay the ICO data protection fee unless an exemption applies. For a sole trader it is the Tier 1 fee of £52 a year, or £47 by direct debit, and failing to pay can mean a penalty of up to £4,350. [ICO]

Keep alarm and key safe codes somewhere with a password, not in a shared notes app or a group chat.

7The law on the lead

Several dog laws apply to the person in charge of the dog, not only the owner. As the walker, that is you:

• Collar and tag. In a public place a dog must wear a collar with the owner's name and address on it or on a tag, and the offence covers the person in charge. [Control of Dogs Order 1992]
• Dangerous dogs. If a dog is dangerously out of control, the person in charge of it at the time can be liable under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. [legislation.gov.uk] XL Bully dogs are banned in England and Wales. [GOV.UK]
• Microchips. Every dog must be microchipped and registered by eight weeks old. It is the owner's duty, but check it at your first meeting: a chip is how a lost dog gets home. [GOV.UK]
• Clearing up. Most councils enforce dog fouling through PSPOs, so carry more bags than you think you need.

8What to charge

There is no official price survey for UK dog walking. The published ones come from marketplaces and software firms and disagree, so treat these as rough bands:

• Group walk: roughly £8 to £15 per dog
• Solo walk: roughly £12 to £20
• London: towards the top of both ranges, around £15 to £20

Sources: [Bark] [Pet Sitter Dashboard 2025 survey]

The better guide is what walkers near you charge. Look at the prices on their websites and local Facebook groups, then remember that you have to cover insurance, fuel, any park licence and holidays out of that price. Our pricing calculator helps you work out a price that covers your costs. It shows dollars, but the arithmetic works the same in pounds.

9Your first clients

You do not need ads to find your first ten clients. What works:

• People who already know you. Tell friends, neighbours and your own Facebook that you are a professional, insured, DBS-checked walker.
• Local groups. Nextdoor and your town's Facebook groups are where owners ask for recommendations.
• A Google Business Profile. It is free, it puts you on the map when someone searches “dog walker near me”, and every review helps.
• Vets, groomers and pet shops. Ask to leave a card. They get asked for recommendations all the time.
• A meet and greet before every new dog. Collect the vet's details, feeding notes, recall and lead behaviour, and the key safe code before the first walk. Our client intake checklist lists what to ask.

10Running the admin

Once you have a dozen regular dogs, the admin becomes the hard part: who is booked on which day, whose key is where, who has paid and who has not. Whatever you use, make sure it handles:

• Weekly walks that repeat without re-entering them
• Notes for each dog: feeding, recall, key and alarm codes
• A photo update for the owner after each walk
• Invoices in pounds, with a record of who has paid

That is what we built Nuzzo for UK dog walkers to do. It runs on UK time and invoices in pounds. It does not add VAT, and the subscription is billed in US dollars. The trial is 14 days and needs no card.

11FAQ