Poultry and other captive birds: registration in Great Britain
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
Download the full outcome
Detail of outcome
We received 3,419 responses (3,387 through Citizen Space and 32 by email).
Following careful consideration of responses and taking into account government objectives to tackle outbreaks of notifiable avian diseases (such as bird flu) in kept birds, the UK government, the Scottish Government and Welsh Government have agreed to proceed with proposed changes to:
- extend registration to all kept birds, not just poultry, and reduce the threshold from 50 to 1
- exempt psittacines and passerines (budgies, parrots, canaries and similar species) kept within a dwelling or in a dedicated ‘bird house’ without any access to the outside, from the mandatory registration requirement
- mandate all keepers to review their records annually
The proposed changes will be implemented in 2 phases. The mandatory registration requirements would apply from late summer or early autumn 2024 and the mandatory annual updates 12 months afterwards.
Original consultation
Consultation description
We want to hear your views on our plans to amend and extend the current compulsory poultry registration requirements to all bird keepers or bird keepers with 10 or more birds.
We are also seeking your views on the requirement for all bird keepers to update their information on the register annually.
A Welsh version of the consultation is available.
Last updated 15 April 2024 + show all updates
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Added NFU Cymru to Annex A: list of respondents in English and Welsh versions of summary of responses.
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Added summary of responses and government response in English and Welsh.
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First published.