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Animals (Penalty Notices) Act 2022

Contents

Policy background

  1. This Act creates new financial penalties for animal health and welfare offences that add to and complement the current enforcement regime to support early redirection through behaviour change to promote compliance.
  2. This reforms the way we enforce animal health and welfare across all farmed animals (e.g. on farm, in transport, at market and at time of killing) and kept animals (e.g. zoos and companion animals) in England with offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 applying as a reserved power in Wales.
  3. It safeguards and strengthens animal health and welfare, building on the existing domestic enforcement framework which had few options beyond prosecution, by widening the suite of available enforcement tools.
  4. The enforcement system uses a mix of sanctions, advice, and guidance to deliver high domestic animal health and welfare standards, enhancing productivity and giving confidence to consumers and international trading partners.
  5. For over 40 years, agricultural strategy and public policy were largely shaped by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Cross compliance, a system linking CAP payments to regulatory compliance, became the major vehicle for enforcement of standards on farms, and its application of payment deductions has been widely regarded as disproportionate.
  6. As cross compliance is phased out, payments will wind down, resulting in an enforcement gap between issuing advice and commencing criminal prosecution. As a consequence, both regulatory breaches and non-compliance in the form of offences have the potential to slip through the net without appropriate recourse. This opportunity allows for the improvement of standards on farms and elsewhere through a transparent and measured response that fills this gap.
  7. The framework for penalty notices in this Act applies across all animal health, welfare and biosecurity legislation, meaning financial penalties may be used across companion animal, zoo animal and animal by product enforcement in addition to in respect of livestock.
  8. This Act forms part of a broader approach to maintaining and enhancing high domestic animal health and welfare standards, enhancing productivity and giving confidence to consumers and international trading partners. The government published an Action Plan for Animal Welfare in May 2021, which sets out a range of legislative and non-legislative reforms to ensure that the welfare of all animals, whether farm, companion, or wild animals, builds on the UK’s high standards for animal welfare.

Relevant Offences

  1. Section 1(2) states that the Secretary of State may, by regulations, prescribe offences as relevant offences for the purposes of this Act. This section requires the Secretary of State to make regulations to ‘switch on’ the penalty notices option through regulations, for relevant offences under the primary legislation listed in the Act itself and all secondary legislation made under that primary legislation.
    1. The Secretary of State may prescribe an offence only if it is:  
    2. an offence under regulations made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 which the Secretary of State considers relates to animals or animal products;  
    3. an offence under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976;  
    4. an offence under section 19 of the Zoo Licensing Act 1981;  
    5. an offence under the Animal Health Act 1981 or an order made under that Act;  
    6. an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or under regulations made under section 12 or 13 of that Act;  
    7. an offence under the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019, or
    8. an offence under section 1, 3 or 4(8) of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

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