Which Councils Actually Require a Pet Business Permit?

What we did

Every guide to starting a pet business ends with "check with your local council". That is true and it is useless, because it does not tell you what you are checking for.

So we read all of them. All 539 Australian local councils, on their own websites, local laws and fee schedules, asking one question: is there a permit or registration specifically for running an animal business, what is it called, and what does it cost?

205 councils have one. 313 confirmed they do not. 146 publish a fee. The rest are recorded as unresolved, and we say which and why at the foot of this article.

This guide is general information for Australian pet business owners. It is not legal, accounting, tax or financial advice, and it does not take account of your circumstances. Australian pet businesses are regulated across four separate layers, federal, state and territory, regional and local council, and each publishes its own rules independently. This guide brings that fragmented material together in one place. It is based on publicly available information published by those bodies, verified on 7 August 2026, and linked at the point each fact is stated so you can read the original. We maintain those links and re-check them, but we do not control what those bodies publish, and rules, thresholds and fees change, most commonly on 1 July. You remain responsible for your own compliance: confirm your position with the relevant authority, your council, or your own accountant or solicitor, and make your own decision before you act. Petboost accepts no responsibility for any action taken on the basis of this article. If anything here is inaccurate, tell us and we will correct it.

The national picture

Three things fall out of that table, and only a full national read produces them.

Western Australia is the most heavily licensed state in the country, not Victoria. If you sample only the capital cities you get the opposite impression, because WA's regime lives in 137 individual shire dogs local laws rather than in one state Act.

New South Wales and the Northern Territory have nothing, anywhere. Not one council out of 146 between them. That is not a sampling artefact; it is every council in both jurisdictions.

Queensland is genuinely split, and it splits by council size rather than by geography.

Western Australia: 93 councils, and it is a kennel licence

WA councils licence an approved kennel establishment under their own Dogs Local Law, made under the Dog Act 1976. Ninety-three of 137 councils have one and 68 publish a fee.

The fees cluster tightly. $200 is the modal figure across the state. Sample from the councils that publish one:

The catch that matters most: it is a kennel licence. Almost none of these councils names a grooming salon or a doggy daycare. Carnarvon is the only council in the country that uses the plain words "Boarding Kennels" in its licence title. So a WA grooming salon usually falls outside the licence entirely and is governed by planning approval instead.

Two WA councils show the opposite ends of the same rule. Gosnells operates a gazetted Kennel Zone, in its own words "an area gazetted within the City of Gosnells for all dog related activities associated with breeding, boarding and for the keeping of more than two dogs", off Ranford Road in Southern River. You cannot site kennels anywhere else in that council. Albany publishes its kennel licence with the explicit caveat that it has no kennel zone at all. Same state, same instrument, opposite constraint.

Victoria: 65 councils, and it is the clearest regime in the country

Victoria is the only state where the requirement flows from a single state Act, the Domestic Animals Act 1994, so every council administers the same thing under the same name: a Domestic Animal Business registration or permit. Sixty-five councils confirmed it and 39 publish a fee.

A tenfold spread, for the same statutory registration, from $124 at Towong to $860 at Casey.

Two Victorian quirks worth knowing. Wangaratta's fee is worded "Domestic Animal Business (Cat)" only, at $350 for 2025/26, which a dog boarding operator reading that schedule could easily conclude does not apply to them. And several councils, including Wyndham, Alpine, Ararat and Cardinia, document the requirement only in their Domestic Animal Management Plan or fee register, not on any page about pets. Cardinia's sits under Business permits, where its own table reads "Pet shop, boarding kennel, breeder to Domestic animal business permit".

Our full guide to Victorian Domestic Animal Business registration covers what counts, what does not, and the 10 April renewal date.

South Australia: a registration, not a permit, and probably not yours

South Australia is where a plausible-looking answer turns out to be wrong, so this section is worth reading slowly.

Thirty-one SA councils publish a fee line called something like "Dog Business", "Business Dogs" or "Business Involving Dogs", ranging from Cleve's flat $75 to Playford's $89.15 to $2,764.40 and Adelaide's $93 to $1,850 for 2026-27. It looks exactly like a business permit.

It is not a permit to operate. It is section 35 of the Dog and Cat Management Act 1995, and the Act says the operator "may apply". It is an elective bulk route for registering the dogs, discharging the ordinary duty under s.33 to register each dog individually. Councils choose whether to offer it, which is why Norwood Payneham and St Peters has no such line at all.

And its scope probably excludes you. Section 35 reaches only a kennel where dogs are bred or trained, and security or other services involving the use of dogs. Grooming, daycare and dog walking are outside it, and boarding is expressly carved out of the registration duty by s.33(4)(c).

So in South Australia there is no council animal business permit in the sense this article is about. There is a bulk dog registration option that breeding and training kennels can elect into, and a planning approval through PlanSA that everyone else needs. If you are a groomer in SA and your council's fee schedule lists a "Dog Business" rate, that line is very likely not yours.

Two exceptions to keep an eye on. Tatiara's fee line explicitly names "Boarding Kennel" alongside breeder, training and racing kennels, despite the boarding carve-out. And Mitcham charges $37 per cat for a business involving cats, on top of the dog scale.

Queensland: it depends which council, and size is the tell

Queensland councils run the standard Queensland model local law, whose only animal approval is "Keeping of Animals" under Subordinate Local Law 1.5, which is an excess-animal and livestock permit. Barcaldine's own page says outright that kennels and enclosures do not constitute approval.

The councils that licence commercial animal businesses are the ones that wrote their own local law, and they are mostly the large ones. Fourteen of 78 have one:

Ipswich is the only council in all 539 whose licence names pet daycare in its own title.

Cairns is the cautionary one. It has a "Pet Shop/Cattery/Kennel permit", and that permit appears neither in its Pets and animals section nor on its Business regulations and permits page. It is reachable only through a general Forms and permits index. An owner browsing the obvious places would conclude no permit exists.

Whitsunday is the find for home-based operators: a Multiple Animal Pet Sitting Permit, a genuine business form asking for hours and days of operation, kennel housing counts and a licence indemnity. It is the only permit in the country aimed squarely at home-based pet sitting.

NSW and the NT: nothing, and that is the finding

We read all 128 NSW councils and all 18 NT councils. Not one has an animal business permit.

NSW councils register companion animals and issue the state annual permits for non-desexed cats and dangerous dogs, and that is the extent of it. A boarding kennel, cattery or daycare is a land use requiring development consent under the council's Local Environmental Plan. Several councils say so in their own words, and some publish detailed controls: Wingecarribee has a dedicated "Animal Boarding or Training Establishment" page that is a development pathway rather than a permit, Shoalhaven's DCP has a chapter on dog breeding and boarding establishments, and Hornsby's requires 100 metres separation for cats and dogs.

The NT is the same, with the added wrinkle that development consent sits with the NT Development Consent Authority rather than the council. City of Darwin's own by-laws state that the Planning Scheme, not the by-laws, governs animal boarding.

So in NSW and the NT, "no permit" means a bigger process, not a smaller one. Development consent happens before you sign a lease, not after. Our guide to planning approval covers what that involves.

Tasmania: the trap in the name

Twenty-two Tasmanian councils publish something called a kennel licence. Twenty-one of them mean "you own more than two dogs".

Hobart's is typical, and reading it makes the point: it is required for "more than two dogs over the age of six months", assessed on yard size, fencing, shelter, bedding and nuisance, with a public notice in The Mercury and a 14 day objection window for anyone within 200 metres. It is a dog-numbers licence under the Dog Control Act 2000. It governs how many dogs live at a property and says nothing about whether you may run a business.

Clarence is the single exception in the state, and in the whole dataset it is the only Tasmanian council whose kennel licence its own page extends to commercial boarding and breeding.

Launceston, Tasmania's second city, publishes a full Dog Forms index with no kennel or animal business application in it at all.

The mistake this data exists to prevent

Across 539 councils the most common failure mode is not missing a permit. It is paying for the wrong one.

Almost every council in Australia publishes an animal permit of some kind. Overwhelmingly it is a keeping permit: more than two dogs, an additional animal, an excess animal, a multiple pet permit, a third dog, a non-desexed cat, a breeder identification number. Those are household permits. They are not a licence to trade, and holding one authorises nothing about your business.

Real examples we deliberately kept out of the fee tables above, because each one sits in a fee schedule looking exactly like a business licence: Brisbane's $375.65 cat and dog owner permit, Perth's $81 application to keep more than the prescribed number of dogs, Palmerston's $300 Animal Licence, Wyndham's $340 excess animal permit, Port Adelaide Enfield's $63.80, Darwin's $171, Hobsons Bay's $191, Yarra's $72.

Two more that are subtler still. Several WA councils publish a per-establishment dog registration rate under s.27 of the Dog Act, which is a registration charge for the dogs at a kennel, not a licence fee for the kennel. And Adelaide Hills publishes "Business involving dogs, per dog $117.00", which is the s.35 registration described above and not an operating permit.

The test is simple. Ask whether the thing authorises the premises and the activity, or merely the number of animals. If it is counted per animal, it is almost always registration.

What to ask your council

1. "For this address, in this zone, what land use category is a dog grooming salon or daycare, and does it need development approval?" In NSW, the NT and most of Queensland and South Australia, this is the only question that matters.
2. "Does the council issue an animal business permit or kennel licence separately from planning approval?" Yes in Victoria and most of WA. Usually no elsewhere.
3. "Is the fee you have quoted me a business licence, or a per-animal registration?" This is the question that saves money and prevents a false sense of compliance.
4. "What is the financial year, and when does it reset?" Council fees are adopted with the annual budget, usually for 1 July.
5. In WA, ask whether the council has a kennel zone. If it does, siting matters more than the licence.

Coverage and limits

All 539 councils were read. 205 have a permit or registration, 313 confirmed none, 146 publish a fee. Thirty-seven are recorded as unresolved rather than guessed, for reasons we can name: some councils sit behind bot protection that blocks automated reading, some publish their dogs local law only as a scanned image with no text layer, and a handful publish no regulatory content at all.

A few specific caveats we would rather state than bury. Port Adelaide Enfield published business registration tiers in 2023-24 that are absent from its current schedule, so we have not carried the old figures forward. Westonia in WA publishes only three local laws, none about dogs, yet its 2025-26 budget lists a "Breach of Kennel Establishment Licence" infringement, so a licence exists somewhere unpublished. Mount Isa's fee register heads a block "Animal Approvals other than breeding or boarding kennels", implying a kennel approval that appears in none of its four local laws. Where a council's fee schedule was only reachable through a web archive of that council's own document, the financial year printed on the document is the one quoted here.

The ACT is absent from this article and that is correct. The ACT has no local councils. Development approval sits with the Territory Planning Authority and pet business licensing with the Animal Welfare Authority under the Animal Welfare Act 1992.

Verified 7 August 2026 against the sources below, all of which are publicly available. Rules, categories and fees change, and council fees are typically reset on 1 July with each council's budget. This article is a starting point for your own research, not a substitute for it. Check the linked source and confirm your own position with the relevant authority before you rely on anything here.

Sources

• City of Casey, Register a domestic animal business: casey.vic.gov.au
• Cardinia Shire Council, Business permits and registrations: cardinia.vic.gov.au
• City of Port Phillip, Business permit guide assessment: portphillip.vic.gov.au
• Wyndham City Council, Domestic Animal Management Plan 2026-2029: wyndham.vic.gov.au
• City of Melbourne, Domestic animal businesses: melbourne.vic.gov.au
• City of Monash, Domestic Animal Business: monash.vic.gov.au
• City of Wanneroo, Dog kennel licence: wanneroo.wa.gov.au
• City of Gosnells, Kennel zone: gosnells.wa.gov.au
• City of Stirling, Dogs Local Law 2008: stirling.wa.gov.au
• City of Fremantle, Local laws relating to dogs: fremantle.wa.gov.au
• City of Perth, Pets and animals: perth.wa.gov.au
• Logan City Council, Register of Cost-Recovery Fees and Charges 2025-26: logan.qld.gov.au
• Cairns Regional Council, Pet Shop/Cattery/Kennel permit: cairns.qld.gov.au
• City of Moreton Bay, Business licences and approvals: moretonbay.qld.gov.au
• Brisbane City Council, Apply for an animal permit: brisbane.qld.gov.au
• Mackay Regional Council, Business permits and licences: mackay.qld.gov.au
• City of Adelaide, Permits and licences: cityofadelaide.com.au
• City of Charles Sturt, Pets and animal management: charlessturt.sa.gov.au
• City of Port Adelaide Enfield, Apply for a permit: cityofpae.sa.gov.au
• City of Hobart, Kennel licences: hobartcity.com.au
• City of Launceston, Dog Forms: launceston.tas.gov.au
• City of Sydney, Business permits, approvals and tenders: cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au
• Inner West Council, Animals: innerwest.nsw.gov.au
• City of Wollongong, Pets: wollongong.nsw.gov.au
• City of Palmerston, Pet registration and licencing: palmerston.nt.gov.au
• City of Darwin, Planning and development: darwin.nt.gov.au