Source: Auckland Council
Auckland Council has welcomed the government’s announcement of a ‘comprehensive review’ of the ageing Dog Control Act 1996 and urges that this progress with urgency, and a firm timeline, given the significant issues many regions are facing.
The council’s Director of Community Rachel Kelleher says Minister Watts’ letter to mayors, chairs and chief executives this morning is a welcome step in the right direction. In particular it acknowledges that the Dog Control Act is not fit for purpose, signals the potential for a much-needed overhaul of the legislation and highlights work on enforcement, guidelines and existing tools – that Auckland Council is already throwing all available resources at.
“In the last year alone Auckland Council has invested an additional $10m in region-wide initiatives to tackle our burgeoning dog problem in Tāmaki Makaurau.
“Every cent collected from responsible dog owners’ licence fees along with infringement fees and anything else we can appropriately allocate, has gone back into trying to make our streets safe places for children, families, older Aucklanders, visitors, dog owners and their pets. But we need more.
“The current legislation is not enabling us to get on top of the increasing number of dogs roaming our streets or to take action in circumstances where we know a dog poses a risk to public safety.
“Mayor Wayne Brown, Councillor Josephine Bartley the Chair of our Regulatory and Safety Committee (whose own dog was attacked this week by an aggressive roaming dog) and all of our councillors have supported us to do everything we can to bolster council’s Animal Management services, under the powers currently available to us.
“They have added their voices, on behalf of their communities, to our appeals to government to strengthen those powers – I expect that we will continue to make our voices heard to ensure that this commitment doesn’t get forgotten,” says Kelleher.
What can we do to help?
In frequent correspondence with policy makers and Ministers, Auckland Council has signalled its commitment to add its knowledge, expertise and resources to a review of the Act.
“We have already carried out an extensive review of the legislation in our efforts to see what more we could do to address the challenges Auckland is facing. We have reached out to our counterparts in government, at other councils and in the local government sector’s professional bodies to share what we have been doing, how our work to date might be used to inform change, and have offered to take on a leadership role in a review process.
“Thorough work takes resource and momentum. We don’t want either of those things to stand in the way of our ability to keep our communities safe, so we’ve made it clear that we will do all we can to help the government and the sector do this work and would like to see this progressed with urgency and clear timeframes.”
Our commitment to Aucklanders
In its announcement today the government emphasised its expectation that councils must use all powers available to them under the current Act.
“Ministers have made a fair point about councils ensuring they’re already using all tools available to them. Auckland Council’s Policy on Dogs was last reviewed in 2025 and strengthens every lever available to us.
“We agree that council policies must include tools like requiring menacing breeds be desexed – ours does,” says Kelleher.
Auckland Council’s additional $10m funding has increased capacity at shelters, including through the introduction of a new dog adoption centre; enhanced all of our existing programmes and enforcement capabilities, including recruiting more Animal Management Officers and veterinary staff; and delivered new hard-hitting campaigns to try to make this problem resonate with more dog owners.
“We have established an in-house dog desexing clinic, where we will desex around 2,000 dogs this year from high-risk areas ourselves, expanded our shelters and run campaigns to appeal to irresponsible dog owners to step up and be better citizens.
“We have also stepped up our own game, by coming down hard on enforcement. Infringement actions have increased from 6,000 in 2024 to 17,000 in 2025 in an effort to tackle irresponsible ownership behaviours,” she says.
Where owners are repeatedly failing to meet their obligations, we pursue probationary ownership or disqualification. This can be a lengthy process and what we frequently seeing is probationary owners continuing to infringe despite the risk of losing their dogs.
“In 2025 we were able to disqualify 50 owners and put 123 owners on probation – these numbers don’t capture the complexity behind carrying out the lengthy disqualification process set out under the Act; nor monitoring the probationary conditions.
“We currently have 160 active cases going through our court prosecution process for attacks on people and pets.
“What remains is having stronger tools to compel owners who repeatedly ignore the rules to manage, contain and desex their dogs, to do so. Or for us to be able to do it for them.”