Law by nation
12 practices · 48 sourced positions
The same practice compared across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the instrument, the commencement date and a last-checked date against every cell.
Where to take an animal, and what the law says
Homing Ground is a UK animal welfare information utility. It reports; it does not campaign. Every factual claim on it carries a primary source and the date that source was last checked, and anything not known says so rather than being filled in.
Have you found an animal?
Two questions — what it is, and what state it is in — then what the RSPCA and the law say to do, and which of the 166 listed organisations take that animal in.
Found an animal — start here Search the directory
Plain pages, no script, nothing to download. Built for a phone on one bar of signal.
The law, with a source against every line
Animal welfare is devolved and the four nations have genuinely diverged. This is the part of the site built to be cited.
Glossary
40 terms
Stringfoot, cubbing, GL41, lairage, AIPZ — each marked according to whether it has a statutory definition or is only sector usage.
Seasonal calendar
12 dated windows · 3 without fixed dates
Close seasons, the hedge cutting ban and firework night hours charted across the year, each with the Act it comes from and the nations it binds.
Timeline
1876 to this year
UK animal welfare legislation in order, with each Act’s long title quoted from the register rather than paraphrased.
The public record
Swept from parliament’s own APIs and the departments’ own publications, on a schedule, and published as found. No commentary is added and no member is named individually.
Bills
89 tracked
Every bill before parliament that would change the law on animals, with the stage it has reached and whether it became law.
Divisions
56 recorded
How the Commons and the Lords divided on animal questions — the motion, the date, the counts and the majority. Never how an individual member voted.
Written answers
997 questions and answers
What the government has said in writing about animals, each answer attributed to the department that gave it.
Petitions
117 open
Open petitions to parliament about animals, with the signature count against the 10,000 and 100,000 thresholds and the government reply where one exists.
Consultations
1 open · 119 on record
What is open for responses and when it closes, alongside the record of what has been asked and what was decided.
Sector news
825 headlines · 47 feeds
Headlines from the organisations’ own feeds — welfare charities and rescues alongside the bodies governing shooting, racing and angling. Headline, publisher, date and a link, and nothing else.
Rescues and the organisations behind them
Find a rescue
166 organisations · 20 species covered
Searchable by species, name and region. Capacity is shown only where an organisation has confirmed it, with how long ago.
Help board
0 open requests
Space, transport, equipment and advice requests between rescues. Reading is open to anyone; only an owner-verified listing can post.
Non-lethal control
5 methods · 2 providers
What the published evidence shows for each method, what it requires, and the short directory of providers who publish a non-lethal commitment.
Add a group
Corrections welcome
Suggest an organisation, or claim a listing you run. A wrong entry is worse than a missing one, so a correction is as useful as an addition.
By animal
Sections that follow a single animal all the way through: where it can be taken, what the law permits, what the published evidence says, and the claims most often made about it.
Pigeons
Where the pigeons are. Who takes them in, what the law permits, and what the published evidence says about managing their numbers.
Gulls
A protected wild bird that no general licence covers any more. What the four nations now require before one can be controlled, what the population assessments behind that actually say, and what to do about a grounded chick in July.
Hedgehogs
Vulnerable in Great Britain, and almost nothing that is killing them is unlawful. What the law actually protects, what the population surveys record, the hazards a garden can fix, and the one rule worth knowing: a hedgehog out in daylight is in trouble.
Badgers
The only wild mammal here with an Act of its own, and the most contested animal on the site. What the 1992 Act protects, and where the four nations have got to on culling for bovine TB — which is now four different places.
Foxes
The animal here with the least legal protection and the most argument about it. No close season and no licence needed — what the law restricts is method, and hunting with dogs, which three of the four nations prohibit.
Every section, whether or not the panel above has reached it: Pigeons · Gulls · Hedgehogs · Badgers · Foxes.
Most recent headlines
Consultation Opens on Revised Welfare & Operational Standards
Let’s Learn Moor marks ten years with BASC Patron The Princess Royal
Going the extra mile for World Animal Day!
All 825 headlines, filterable by publisher and subject.
How this works
It reports; it does not advocate. What organisations say and do is published, sourced and dated. Contested subjects carry the other side’s response at the same prominence. The site has no house position on whether any of it ought to be lawful.
Unknown stays unknown. Contact details, capacity and policies are not generated. Where a field has not been confirmed it says “not recorded” and can be corrected.
Primary sources only. legislation.gov.uk, gov.uk, the registers and the APIs themselves — not a press report of a document that is available.
Open data: organisations · law · providers · help board. Facts, freely reusable — please keep the source links. Contact us with a correction.