Consultation outcome

Poultry and other captive birds: registration in Great Britain

From:
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Animal and Plant Health Agency
Published
7 March 2023
Last updated
30 October 2024 — See all updates
This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Summary of responses and government response

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Crynodeb o'r ymatebion ac ymateb y llywod

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De minimis assessment: amendments to the poultry registration requirements

PDF, 403 KB, 24 pages

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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

Summary

Seeking views on proposals to make it compulsory for bird keepers in Great Britain to register their birds.

This consultation was held on another website.

This consultation ran from
to

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.

Updates to this page

Published 7 March 2023
Last updated 30 October 2024 + show all updates

  1. The page has been updated to add the de minimis assessment.

  2. Added NFU Cymru to Annex A: list of respondents in English and Welsh versions of summary of responses.

  3. Added summary of responses and government response in English and Welsh.

  4. First published.

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