Kitty Catz Cattery & Kennels has been an established business for the past 25 years. We are devastated as we are now on the verge of losing our Boarding Kennels due to noise nuisance complaints to Environmental Health from our neighbours.

The boarding kennels has been an existing business for 25 years but only licensed for 15 years which has never received any complaints from any neighbours on the estate previous to us taking over the business in October 2021. Back in January 2021 the property next door to ours which is only 8 metres away from our Boarding Kennels was bought by new owners,  at this time the new owners assumed the kennels where no longer open however,  this was due to a nationwide lock down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

We took over Kitty Catz Cattery & Boarding Kennels in October 2021 and within 3 weeks of ownership we had received our first letter from Pendle Borough Council explaining they had received complaints of noise nuisance from our neighbours this resulted in a 3 month sound monitoring test for noise in which the results found there was no noise nuisance however in this time the council then decided we did not have planning permission for Doggy Day Care in which resulted in us having to stop this service is May 2022 even though this had been running for the last 15 years. This caused great disappointment for customers as some of them used us as they are front line workers and could go to work knowing their dog was being looked after. 
After 7 months of excessive stress and worry we spoke to the adjoining neighbours and asked them what we could do to sort this out once and for all ?during this discussion we told the neighbours that this would be going to court and there reply was ‘we don’t want it to go to court we just want the noise to stop!’ After this discussion we decided we was going to stop the dog boarding and go into small animal boarding and home dog boarding so there would be no dogs in the kennels, we sent an email to the neighbour explaining this and their response was ‘that’s fine as long as the other dogs don’t bark’ it was apparent from that conversation that whatever we decided to do they where just going to keep complaining, so we continued as we were, we had tried to compromise but it still wasn’t good enough. We then applied for a Certificate of Lawfulness to carry on running the Doggy Day Care which all the property owners on Newlaund Farm objected against after never having any issues with the Boarding Kennels before. The application then went to the council meeting which it was refused by the committee on Monday 4th July, they refused it as the could not distinguish between boarding & doggy day care, our representative stayed behind after the meeting to ask the neighbours once again was there any compromise in this situation and the neighbours replied ‘No we want the kennels shut down!’ The following day we received another letter from Environmental Health stating they had received noise complaints once again of the dogs barking and whining. Environmental Health came and monitored the sound for 1 morning on the 7th July instead of 3 months like previous and we have now been served with an Abatement Notice threatening to close us down. 

This is our Family home and dream business that which we are now at risk of losing due to new neighbours buying a property less than 8 metres away from our kennels which were operating many years before they moved in, we have now owned the business for 8 months and within 3 weeks of being there we have had nothing but Stress and Upset from our neighbours trying to shut down our business and ruin our livelihood. This all feels very personal and we feel victimised and harassed  by the people on the estate as never before have any of them objected in all the years the business as been operating. It’s a much needed service for many people and we are highly praised by all our customers for the care we give to the animals. 

We hope you will please take a moment to sign our petition and help save our kennels as taking this to court is just something we simply cannot afford to do, but should not have to lose our dream home and business . We would truly welcome & be grateful for any support .