Pets Policy Consultation

The City of London Corporation Housing Pets Policy was reviewed in 2024. The complete results, including a breakdown by estate and by tenure type, are below.

The purpose of having a policy is to ensure residents are aware of our approach, which is outlined in our tenancy and lease agreements.

We want all tenants to enjoy living in their homes and we recognise the benefits that responsible pet ownership can bring. However, we must ensure that controls are in place to prevent irresponsible pet ownership which can cause suffering to animals and a nuisance or annoyance to others.

An initial consultation plan was devised that included multiple workshops both online and face to face with residents, in order to understand residents ideas and concerns about both the way in which the consultation and survey took place, alongside any thoughts on what a potential future pets policy might look like.

Calm Mediation was asked to facilitate the consultation workshops, as an independent organisation, allowing residents to feel comfortable sharing their views and opinions.

Two key recommendations that came out of the consultation workshops were that we use a fair and independent ballot process that ensures as high a turnout as possible and delivers a fair result from a fair survey, and that we provide as much information as possible for residents to read before they take part in the survey. The common themes residents specifically wanted information on what the management of a policy that allows dogs might look like, what the potential impact on service charges are and how this may impact leaseholders, as well as how the survey would operate.

As a result of consultation with residents, we partnered with Acuity, an organisation with over 25 years of experience in conducting fair and resident-focused surveys, to help us draft and run the survey process. We also worked with colleagues from the Housing Management, Estate Services, Home Ownership, Legal and other teams where appropriate to help devise the Information Booklet, which included responses to a number of issues raised by residents at the consultation and was shared with residents alongside the survey.

We received 1,235 responses from 2,745 delivered, which is a turnout of 45%. For this number of responses, the margin of error is +3.0% which means a difference of more than 6% is needed for it to be statistically significant. The difference between Yes and No responses is 18%, which is three times the required difference. The Housing Regulator target number for responses for a social landlord of approximately our size would be 500.

The results of the survey with a 45% turnout.

Based on these results, a Pets Policy was drafted and approved that continues our current approach.