| LICENSING — Pet animals — Birds for sale at bird fair — Traders possessed of pet shop licences — Fair organiser obtaining licence to cover fair sales away from shop premises — Whether trading at fair illegal “market” trading — Whether organiser’s licence covering activity of individual traders — Pet Animals Act 1951, ss 1, 2
R (Haynes) v Stafford Borough Council
QBD (Walker J): 14 June 2006
There was no reason to suppose that s 2 of the Pet Animals Act 1951 had been drafted so as to exclude non–open markets (requiring a fee for entry) from the prohibition against selling pet animals in markets. In the case of a bird fair held at a showground, it was not appropriate for a pet animal sale licence to be issued to the organiser, so as to protect trading by fair members whilst away from the premises associated with their own licences, since it was the traders and not the organiser who would trade at the fair.
Walker J sitting in the Queen’s Bench Division so held in granting the claim (but declining relief in the terms of the declarations sought) by Malcolm Haynes for judicial review of the decision of Stafford Borough Council to grant pet animal sales licences to the first and third interested parties, the Parrot Society UK and Shaun Smith, for a bird fair at the premises of the second interested party, Stafford Showground Ltd. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was joined as fourth interested party.
The claimant was concerned about the well-being of birds which were to be sold at Parrot Society bird fairs held occasionally at Staffordshire Showground. The local authority issued pet shop licences to allow bird sales at the shows. The claimant contended that s 1 of the Pet Animals Act 1951 did not allow for licensing at a fair and that s 2 of the Act made it an offence to sell at all on such an occasion.
The Pets Act 1951 provides by s 1 that “(1) No person shall keep a pet shop except under the authority of a licence granted in accordance with the provisions of this Act”; and by s 2 (as amended by s 1(a) of the Pet Animals Act 1951 (Amendment) Act 1983) that “If any person carries on a business of selling animals as pets in any part of a street or public place, or at a stall or barrow in a market, he shall be guilty of an offence”.
WALKER J said that the payment of money for a ticket to enter a showground was no guarantee against impulse buying. Any need for protection from the weather arose whether or not markets were public. Reading into s 2 a distinction between open and non–open markets would give priority to considerations of bad weather over other general considerations which would apply to both open and non–open markets. There was no justification for thinking that Parliament intended to do so. Concerns as to animal welfare were just as applicable to showground markets as they were to street and non–street open markets. Two important concerns that led the Parrot Society to seek licences were, first, that it might be held to be keeping a pet shop at the event and, second to ensure that traders who carried on business away from the showground at premises where they were licensed to keep a pet shop did not need to obtain individual licences from the council in order to carry on the same business at the event. Licensing was not apt to deal with either of these two important concerns. It was not needed to meet the first concern which simply did not arise. It was not apt to deal with the second concern for, on the face of it, the traders were carrying on the business in question, not the Parrot Society.
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Appearances: Alan Bates (Richard Buxton Cambridge) for the claimant; Eric Owen (Stafford Borough Council) for the council; Carine Patry (Knights Solicitors, Royal Tunbridge Wells) for the first and second interested parties; Paul Harris (Litigation and Prosecution Division, DEFRA) for the fourth interested party. The third interested party did not appear and was not represented.
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