Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => Chicken Chat => Topic started by: Tattyanne456 on April 11, 2010, 15:25
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After watching the Alys Fowler program the other evening, a friend noticed that she mentioned getting permission for keeping a few chickens in her garden. Does anyone know if that is true? I am guessing that you would have to get permission from your local authority, so do they vary from place to place? Tatty
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Maybe it is a rented house so she needs the landlord's permission?
I didn't think you needed permission in a private property :unsure:
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I'm about to ask our council if it's ok to keep a few chickens in our back garden. (If anyone's read my other thread by me, they'll understand...)
But, if you say you don't need to if you own your house, should I ask?
Anyway, has anyone else here asked their council before having chooks in their back garden?
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There may be local by-laws that prevent people keeping livestock and some authorities will count chickens as livestock and not pets. I think it may be upto you to prove that they will be pets if this is the case.
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It's on our house deeds that we aren't allowed to keep livestock inc chooks in our garden. :(
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I live on a council estate, and I know that there are other properties with chickens, but that was the first time I had heard of it.
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There may be local by-laws that prevent people keeping livestock and some authorities will count chickens as livestock and not pets. I think it may be upto you to prove that they will be pets if this is the case.
I've been trawling our councils web site, can't find anything sayin ya or na on keeping chooks in our garden.
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A friend of mine lives in some very expensive 'new builds', and in their deeds it says no chucks :(
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A friend of mine lives in some very expensive 'new builds', and in their deeds it says no chucks :(
Goodness me :ohmy: Why on earth did she buy the house then ::)
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Goldfinger, I had a quick look at our local authority website and I couldn't find anything either. I've lived in this house for about 25 years so I wouldn't have a clue where our tenants welcome pack is!! lol
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I live in a housing association property and sent them an email requesting permission. They never responded! I have kept the email just in case!
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I live in a housing association property and sent them an email requesting permission. They never responded! I have kept the email just in case!
Have you got chicks now at home??
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Our local housing association says no more than 2 hens .And i know some peoples deeds say none at all others say just no boys . :)
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A friend of mine lives in some very expensive 'new builds', and in their deeds it says no chucks :(
Goodness me :ohmy: Why on earth did she buy the house then ::)
I KNOW!!! why would anyone want to have a garden without them? ;)
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I live in a housing association property and sent them an email requesting permission. They never responded! I have kept the email just in case!
Have you got chicks now at home??
Yes, well I did have! I had 3 chickens at home for about a year. I now have 11 at my allotment.
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We checked our deeds....nothing there. We checked with our closest neighbours....no problems there. So we went ahead and got 6, then we hatched 5, including a cockerel, who was rehomed on an open farm, when we felt he was a bit noisy (but no-one had complained!!). Have just got 8 more chicks and plan to keep the girls. Have had chickens for nearly 2 years and not a peep from anyone....well except the birds themselves. :D
Colette
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I looked into this last year before I got my chickens. There are no laws requiring you to get permission to keep poultry assuming the property is your own. All that is needed is your own common sense so not if you live in a high rise or neither if you plan on keeping lots of cockerals. Basically, as long as you don't give your neighbours legitimate grounds to complain they you're okay. Worth running it by them before you purchase just to gage their views. Good luck, chickens are great fun!
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We are looking at keeping chickens, and we are council tenants. We asked the local council did we need permission, They said as long as the neighbours either side of us were ok with it, they would send round an inspector to check the garden and the area were we would keep the chickens. but we could not keep a cockerel, and were allowed 4 chickens.
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I called the council just as a precaution in case anyone wanted to argue with me about keeping hens. They said that as long as I didn't have boys and no more than 50 girls I was fine. He obviously didn't know the address as there is definately not room for 50 (or perhaps he was joking).
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50 is the amount when you have to register with Defra, although some of us choose to register with them anyway even though we have less than that amount :)
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I also had this issue just before we got our 2 girls, I could not get any info from the council but after speaking to the breeder we eventually got the chickens off (local to our area) we just went ahead anyway.
This is what he said:
No boys.
No more than 3 large or 4 smallers girls.
Must be kept clean and hygienic at all times to avoid rats and other dirty little scoundrels.
Check with the neighbours and offer a few eggs as a bribe if they seem doubtful at 1st.
Stick to recommended coop and run sizes for the hens.
All common sence really and easily stuck to for what we required.
He did add: If you live in an ex council house or certain types of new builds check the deeds as a lot do not allow keeping livestock (but this can be removed if you now own the house)
I think different councils around the counrty all have different rules and regulations? but common sense says that if you stick to the above you should be fine.
Well thats my common sense... ::) and that has been known to vary a lot in the past. lol
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Hi. I will answer this with my Land Registry head on, but I am not touting for business, honest ::)
It is not a matter of whether there is a law against keeping them. What you need to find out is if there is a 'restrictive covenant' against keeping them. These covenants state what you cannot do with the land.
If your house is registered with Land Registry you will be able to find out if there is a restrictive covenant registered against your property (unfortunately nothing is free from the government but I will give you the basic steps).
1. Go to www.landregistry.gov.uk and use the 'Find a Property' service. 2. Put in your house details and search. 3. If your house is registered you will be able to purchase a copy of the Title Register. 4. After creating basic login details and then paying £4 with a card you will be sent a pdf of the Register via email (check your spam folder if it does not appear in your inbox after a couple of mins).
WHen you have a copy of the Register the 3rd part (called the Charges Register) will be where these covenants are noted. Usually if they are there the entry will refer to the document being 'filed', which means you will have to pay £12 to get a copy of it. If that is the case you can pm me and I will give you more instructions (trying to keep this reply reasonably short).
Lecture over........good luck
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When buying your house, your solicitor would have pointed out any restrictive covenants that were found when the deeds/searches were made.
We weren't allowed caravans in our gardens ??? or to brew beer (ex church land) ::) :lol:
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very helpful amckeen - thank you :D
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No problem joyfull........can you tell I work in the Customer Support section of Land Registry? :D
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so you are one of those people that I ring up and argue with then ;) :lol:
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When we were moving to Blackpool I did discuss this with our solicitor at the time of going through the deeds, he explained that I could not keep livestock but chickens in legal terms are not livestock so I could keep them just as I could keep pigeons. I do know of many people now keeping chooks at home but I could see this as a minefield with different councils etc, I would always enquire with them.
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So I am seriously *thinking* about getting a couple of chooks and my first step was a couple of weeks ago to contact the local council via their website... because obviously if the council don't allow it then I can't even entertain the idea so no point getting my hopes up. Ten days later I recieved an email in reply asking me to 'ring to discuss the matter further', so its obviously not just a yes or no!
I tried to call today but the chap I need to speak to isn't in til monday. Turns out the department I was asked to call was environmental health - is that normal?!
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Yes that's normal. You can have other issues with chicken keeping such as rats and the like.
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Well, yes, I knew that about the rats but to be fair as a child when we owned rabbits we got rats and we didn't need to speak to environmental health about owning them! Is it more down to the avian flu thing do you think?
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avian flu is more likley to be defra, I think.
environmental health deal with nuisance issues, including noise and rats etc, so that will be their remit.
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Very useful replies, thankyou. I would like to add that there were rats around here long before we got the chickens, but if anyone wanted to be awkward we would have difficulty proving it! lol. A lot of people feed the birds and that alone attracts rats. So far no-one has complained, and there is a steady queue at the gate for eggs, so I suppose we would have to cross that bridge if it were to ever arise. Tatty x
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Hi,
I have kept my chooks and ducks for 2 years and looked into ' permission' before hand. Chickens are not classed as Livestock therefore any legilslation appicable to livestock doesn't apply to chooks. I also found out that there are no laws in relation to keeping chooks or ducks in your own home. Basically common sense prevails, so if you live in a high rise flat then it is not sensible to keep chooks, however, if you are in your own house then its fine. Good practice would be to sound out your neighbours and give them a few eggs. ( and don't keep 10 cockerals!!). I love mine and my neighbours wouldmuch rather her my boy crow than listen to a dog bark 24/7. Good luck and have fun cos they are so addictive xxx
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In our area you are not allowed to keep cockerals in the garden ;) :)
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This is the thing that i dont understand about rats, i know we have rats round here as i saw one a few houses up underneath a car, thing is as you drive down my road to get to my house the amount of houses that have bird feeders out and fat balls hanging off there front garden trees is amazing, surley these are the biggest ways to attract rats and all sorts. Even people that keep a rabbit in a hutch in their back garden may attract rats, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the person keeping a couple of chickens in the back garden would get the blame, just because youve got chooks doesnt necessarly mean your gonna attract rats, im sure lots of people on here that have some girlies have never seen rats, it has to be down to good husbandry.
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Not just new builds restrict chooks. My parents house, 1930s detached in a crescent which orignally had a central common area (now individual gardens), specifically prohibits chooks.
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I have no problem keeping my poultry at home (my own ex council house/private). I want to put some chucks on my allotment & the other plot holders & the allotment officer doesn't want me to put them on there incase it encourages vandals to come over and vandalise other peoples plots, Or if they escape, eat other peoples crops & various other obsticles..............The rules do say I can have them on the lottie.
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AMCKEEN !!!!! :D
I can't PM you to ask you more advice about the chickens and Covenants..... any chance you can email me ???
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My update to this thread is, as some already know...........
They're here!!!!!
Had our 4 girls nearly 2 weeks now (come Saturday) :D :D
We've been expecting at least something to have been said by now, cos they were a bit noisy for the first two days (settling in I guess) but we've had the opposite... Caught our neighbour talking to them from their upstairs window when they were out on the lawn for their first time, the neighbour got a small fright when they saw me laughing at them... :D
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hi there i live in the dudley bourough council and asked my council if i could keep chickens. i told them they were rescue hens and they sent me a diagram of what i should be keeping them in and how far off floor etc. so hopefully they will be okay with you. :D
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Another couple of things to note on the matter of the restrictive covenants I talked about earlier:
It is up to the person with the benefit of the covenant (the person who doesn't want to be disturbed by noisy critters, etc) to enforce the restriction. So, if the covenant was first written in a deed way back in 1930 or something there is a good chance that original seller (who had the benefit) is no longer around. A neighbour who objected wouldn't necessarily be able to do anything unless they happened to know who the successor to that original beneficiary is.
If the covenant is from a newer deed - like if you have bought under a Right to Buy scheme from a Housing Association or Council; or if you are renting from the same organisation - then you may have a chance. Those transfers or leases tend to be of a standard format with entries in them designed to cover all sorts of situations so that a whole new deed does not have to drawn up forevey sale or tenancy. It would definitely be worth contacting the seller or landlord and asking for either the covenant to be modified/cancelled (this is a legal matter but not complicated) or for permission if renting.
In such a request give as much information as possible (set-up,number of birds, etc) and if you can try and find other local henkeepers who could provide a statement, including their neighbours who could possible vouch for how quiet hens really are (roosters are, of course, a different matter).
Anyway, I hope this helps. As I said earlier pm me if you want any specific info that I can help with.
Now I have to go put my girls to bed - they do like to watch the sunset.
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Oh plz don't say i need permission from council... :(
I have just adopted 2 hens from my friend who bought them about 6 weeks ago.......she asked me to take them on as she was allergic to there feathers
I did this without even thinking.. i was so excited about owning some chooks :D
I live in a council property so am a little worried now, as even though i have only owned them for a week today.. i'd hate to have to let them go.. there so lovely my garden wouldn't be the same without them :blush:
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Loopi
Phone your council and ask to speak to planning then ask if there are any restrictions on keeping chickens at home . it's unlikely there are but worth asking. When I contacted our lot I ended up speaking to the animal welfare officer All he said was don't keep cockerals cos of the noise.
BTW chook keeping is addictive LOL
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Thanks Celtic,
I did what you suggested..phoned the council yesterday and had quite a cool conservation with him.. he told me i was ok for now, but not to keep cockrels as they make so much noise.
PHEW!! thank gawd i don't have to let them go!
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What is it with these people who don't like the sound of cockerels and chickens when they live in the country. As far as I'm concerned if you don't like it go back to the town and the exhaust emmisions. If they lived near a farm would they get anywhere complaining about the farm chicken and cocks....... I doubt it.
Also what about the keeping of chickens, and rabbits (heaven forbid), as meat, that goes back into the mists of time and is apparently allowed on allotments as an ancient right. As regards the rats we wouldn't have any if our neighbours didn't throw food on the ground for the birds.