Gulls: the law and the licensing

Last reviewed 25 August 2026. Every figure below is attributed to the body that published it. This is a description of the law, not legal advice.

Every gull is a protected wild bird

There is no species of gull that may be killed at will anywhere in the United Kingdom. Section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 makes it an offence to intentionally kill, injure or take any wild bird, to take, damage or destroy a nest while it is in use or being built, or to take or destroy an egg. Northern Ireland has its own equivalent in the Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985. Anything otherwise caught by those offences has to be licensed.

That is the same starting point as for the feral pigeon, and it is worth stating because it is the part most often assumed away. What differs between species is not whether they are protected but which licence, if any, permits control.

No gull is on a general licence any more

A general licence is one nobody applies for: it is issued to the world, and an authorised person may act under it without contacting the regulator. That is how most routine bird control is done, and until 2019 it was how gulls were controlled too.

Between 2019 and 2020 all four nations took the large gulls off. In England, GL41, the general licence for preserving public health and public safety, runs from 1 January to 31 December 2026 and covers four species: Canada goose, feral pigeon, jackdaw and monk parakeet. No gull appears on it, nor on GL40 or GL42.

Natural England set out the change on 30 January 2020: herring gull and lesser black-backed gull had not been included in Defra's general licences issued the previous year, and control would instead be licensed individually and prioritised, generally with the protection of human life and health as the overriding priority. The stated reason was conservation status — Natural England's assessment was that the level of control being carried out was above a sustainable level for those populations.

What each nation requires now

• England. An individual licence from Natural England. Applications are prioritised, and Natural England has said human life and health will generally come first.
• Scotland. Gulls came off the general licences in April 2020. A specific licence from NatureScot is needed to destroy nests or eggs, to relocate chicks, or to kill. Licences carry quotas and require returns of how many gulls or nests were destroyed before a renewal is granted; NatureScot states that lethal control of chicks and adults is licensed only as a last resort.
• Wales. Herring gull and lesser black-backed gull are not on a Welsh general licence, so a specific licence from Natural Resources Wales is required. NRW states it must be satisfied there is no other satisfactory solution and that preventative measures have been tried or ruled out.
• Northern Ireland. Herring gull, lesser black-backed gull and great black-backed gull have been removed from the general licences. TPG1, for public health and safety, covers feral pigeon and jackdaw only; TPG2 covers hooded crow, jackdaw, magpie, rook, feral pigeon and woodpigeon. Control needs an individual licence from DAERA.

The same comparison, cell by cell with a source and a checked date against each, is on the law by nation grid.

The conservation status behind the decision

The licensing change is not a policy preference; it is a response to published population assessments, and those assessments are what any argument about gull control now has to engage with.

• Herring gull is on the UK Red List in Birds of Conservation Concern 5, the highest category of conservation concern, on grounds of population decline.
• Lesser black-backed gull, great black-backed gull, common gull and black-headed gull are Amber listed, according to NatureScot's summary of the same assessment.
• Figures for the scale of the decline differ by baseline and by source, and both are given here rather than one being chosen. Natural England, in the January 2020 announcement, put the fall in the breeding herring gull population at around 60 per cent since the 1980s, with lesser black-backed gull down by an estimated 48 per cent. The RSPB has reported a 72 per cent fall in UK breeding herring gull numbers measured from 1969.
• NatureScot records that Britain and Ireland hold as much as 43 per cent of the global herring gull population, which is why a decline here is not only a local matter.

Non-lethal measures come first, and that is a licence condition

In every nation the regulator expects alternatives to have been tried before it will consider licensing control, and in Wales and Scotland that expectation is stated as a condition of the application rather than as advice. The measures the regulators name are the familiar ones: proofing and exclusion of roof spaces and ledges, netting and wire, removing access to food, habitat and waste management, and deterrents.

Where a nest is already in use, removing it is itself a licensable act. The practical consequence is that proofing works before the breeding season and not during it, which is why the regulators' guidance is seasonal.