Animal warden service

Tower Hamlets has a small team of Animal Wardens which deals with many types of animal-related complaint.

Services

Animal services offered by Tower Hamlets include:

Stray dogs

If you have found a stray dog, call the Animal Warden Service on

020 7364 5008 during office hours (Mon to Fri 9 am – 5 pm)

You will get a callback within an hour to give you an estimated time the Dog Warden will arrive to collect the dog.  This will usually be within 2 hours.

020 7364 5007 emergency out of hours (all other times including bank holidays)

You will get a callback within an hour to make an appointment to bring the dog to the animal warden service kennels.  The collection point is not manned 24/7 so it is important to arrange your visit with the Animal Warden on duty.

The Animal Warden will try to find the owner of the dog by reading its tag or microchip and will try to contact the owner to tell them how to reclaim the dog.

By law, the Council has to hold the dog for 7 days.  After this, it can be sold, rehomed or destroyed.  LBTH works with various animal charities so that wherever possible, unclaimed dogs can be rehomed.

If you find a dog and would like to keep it, you must report the find to the Animal Warden Service on 020 7364 5008 or email our environmental protection team or complete the reporting a lost pet or stray animal form.

The out of hours emergency line cannot help with enquiries about lost dogs.

Please be prepared to prove ownership of your dog if it has been impounded as a stray, especially if for any reason it was not microchipped to you.  Veterinary records can be useful in this respect. 

There is a reclaim fee of £64 payable to reclaim a stray dog with an addition of £19 pet day kenelling.

We will advise you the correct fee and how to pay it, and where you can pick your dog up from.

Dog fouling

The Animal Warden Service investigates complaints about persistent dog fouling in the borough.

In Tower Hamlets it is an offence to fail to clean up after a dog has fouled in any of the Council’s streets, parks and open spaces.

If you commit an offence, you could receive

• A Fixed Penalty Notice of  £50 or
• A fine in the magistrates’ court of up to £1000.

If you notice a badly fouled area, please tell us about by calling 020 7364 5008 or email the environmental protection team.

We will patrol the area and engage with dog owners to promote responsible dog ownership.  We will remind dog walkers of the clean up law  and warn them of the penalties for forgetting, or not watching their dog closely enough.  We will monitor the area and where we find owners refusing to take on the clean up duty, we will share information with the council’s enforcement teams. Offenders can expect a Fixed Penalty Notice, and repeat offenders could face prosecution and a criminal record.

Animal related nuisance

The Animal Warden Service can deal with smell nuisance caused to you by someone else’s animal ownership.

If you are experiencing a strong smell either:

• Within your home or
• In a communal area of your block like a landing/stairs coming from a neighbour’s pet(s) eg because there are too many pets or they are kept in dirty and unhygienic conditions

Call the Animal Warden Service on 020 7364 5008  or email our environmental protection team.

We will need to come to your home to witness and assess the smell you are experiencing.  Please invite us on a day when the smell is bad, because we will not be able to take any formal action if we can’t smell it or it’s very faint. 

Once we have verified that there is smell nuisance, we will visit and advise the pet owner that they must remedy the situation.  We will offer practical assistance to help them which may include the rehoming of animals if required. We will recommend neutering of pets if appropriate to keep numbers down. 

If we cannot resolve the situation through informal engagement, we will consider taking enforcement action to abate the nuisance.

You should also contact your housing organisation if you have one, as most management companies and registered social landlords can deal with residents causing nuisance under their tenancy or leasehold conditions. 

Barking dogs

The Animal Warden Service can investigate complaints about barking dog nuisance.  However, we will only be able to take enforcement action where we have witnessed Statutory Nuisance under the Sections 79/80 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

Not all dog barking which you find annoying or inconvenient will constitute Statutory Nuisance.

The criteria for assessment include:

• How loud it is
• How long it goes on for
• How regularly/often it happens
• The time of day or night
• Whether there is any malicious provocation

We have to collate evidence of the nuisance to present to court in the event of prosecution. 

We will invite you to call us when excessive noise is ongoing and, subject to officer availability, we will visit to witness it.  The first assessment will usually need to be from inside your home to ascertain the noise level you are experiencing.  Subsequent visits, if required to prove regular occurrence, may be sufficient from outside if the barking is audible at street level.

Dog barking is more likely to constitute Statutory Nuisance at night because people’s usual activity is sleep.  More tolerance of other people’s household noise, including from pets, is expected during the day.  The legislation does not make any special consideration for the needs of night workers or people studying or working from home during the day.

The Animal Warden Service is not able to deal with barking dog noise coming from parks or other public areas.  It is limited to complaints coming from other premises

To complain about barking dog nuisance:

Email our environmental protection team to give us general info about your complaint.

Call 020 7364 5008 during office hours when the noise is ongoing and excessive.  The call handler will alert the duty Animal Warden who will call you back to arrange to visit you promptly, if possible, to witness the nuisance.

Call the Council’s out of hours noise service on 020 7364 5007 if the noise is ongoing and excessive at night.  The service operates Thursday – Sunday between 8pm and 3.30 am.  Officers are available to witness and assess noise.  They will report any dog-related Statutory Nuisance to the Animal Warden Service to progress the case.

Once you have notified us of your complaint, as well as taking formal action, we will try to engage with the dog owner to resolve the problem informally.  We will visit and notify them that a complaint has been received.  We will not say who has complained.  We will discuss the problem, give them some time to carry out any remedial action, then assess whether things have improved. If they have not, we will tell the dog owner that the noise is being monitored and that action under the Environmental Protection Act could follow.

You should also contact your housing organisation if you have one, as most management companies and registered social landlords can deal with residents causing nuisance under their tenancy or leasehold conditions. 

Microchipping

We can scan your dog’s microchip and check the database registration to make sure the information about the owner is correct and up to date.  If it’s not, we can tell you how to get it amended.  It is the law in the UK that all dogs must be microchipped and correctly registered to their owner.

Call 020 7364 5007 or email our environmental protection team to request a check-my-chip appointment.  We will get back to you to arrange.

Lost and found pets

To tell us about a missing pet you can; call us on  020 7364 5007, email our environmental protection team or complete the reporting a lost pet or stray animal form

We will hold the information on file and check it against any found pets reported. We will get back to you if we have news of your pet or if we need to ask you for more information.

Education and events

If you are arranging a community event in Tower Hamlets and would like to invite us to attend, please call us on 020 7364 5008 or email our environmental protection team.   

We can give information and free poop scoop bags to dog owners, and get tips from residents about dog fouling hot spots.  We love meeting the borough’s dogs and their people and the information we get back really helps us plan our patrols.

Useful numbers for animal problems