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Wigan Council animal licensing register

Wigan Council licenses 62 animal businesses in the categories we cover. 29 hold a 4- or 5-star rating — 47% of the register.

We last verified this register 5 weeks ago, so the entries below are current to within a couple of months.

By activity, the most common licence here is dog home boarding (41 businesses), followed by dog boarding (10) and cat boarding (9). 4 of the licensable activities are represented across the authority.

39 licences come up for renewal within twelve months, and 2 have an expiry date already in the past. Longer licence terms are awarded to higher-rated operators, so a register weighted towards distant expiry dates is usually a well-rated one.

Lowton East has the most at 10 of the 62 located businesses (16%), and 6 of the 24 towns have exactly one.

The council's own register is the authoritative source and we link to it below. Where our copy and theirs disagree, theirs is correct — councils sometimes amend entries without changing the published date.

By town

• Abram — 3 licensed businesses
• Ashton in Makerfield South — 1 licensed business
• Aspull New Springs Whelley — 4 licensed businesses
• Astley — 2 licensed businesses
• Atherleigh — 1 licensed business
• Atherton North — 2 licensed businesses
• Atherton South & Lilford — 1 licensed business
• BL8 — 1 licensed business
• Bryn with Ashton in Makerfield North — 2 licensed businesses
• Douglas — 2 licensed businesses
• Golborne & Lowton West — 2 licensed businesses
• Hindley — 3 licensed businesses
• Hindley Green — 3 licensed businesses
• Leigh Central & Higher Folds — 2 licensed businesses
• Leigh South — 4 licensed businesses
• Leigh West — 1 licensed business
• Lowton East — 10 licensed businesses
• Orrell — 2 licensed businesses
• Pemberton — 2 licensed businesses
• Shevington with Lower Ground & Moor — 3 licensed businesses
• Standish with Langtree — 5 licensed businesses
• Tyldesley & Mosley Common — 3 licensed businesses
• Wigan West — 2 licensed businesses
• Worsley Mesnes — 1 licensed business

Full register

Star ratings are issued by the licensing authority and combine a risk score with a compliance assessment — they are not customer reviews and we never merge them with one. A new business cannot normally receive 5 stars regardless of quality, and a 2- or 3-star business is still fully compliant with the law. Ratings are reproduced exactly as published by the issuing council.

Rating distribution across Wigan Council

These are businesses licensed to board animals for payment under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. They are not house sitters. A sitter who stays in your home and cares for your pet there does not need this licence — the licensing regime applies to boarding at the operator's premises, home boarding, day care, breeding, and sale of pets.

Where these figures come from

Last updated

1 July 2026

Basis

Listed asking rates, not transacted prices

• Local authority animal activity licence registers — English local authorities. Factual fields extracted from each council's published public register: trading name, licence number, licensable activity, star rating and expiry date. Where a council redacts an address — as they routinely do for home boarders operating from a residential address — the record is kept without a location and never geolocated by inference. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. Refreshed 1 August 2026.
• Postcode geography — Office for National Statistics / Ordnance Survey, via postcodes.io. Postcodes already published in council registers are resolved to a parish or ward and coordinates. Only postcodes the council itself published are looked up. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. Refreshed 1 August 2026.
• Source register: https://www.wigan.gov.uk/Business/Licensing-Permits-Registrations/Public-register.aspx
• Re-use terms asserted by the council: Open Government Licence v3.0