An updated Dog Control Act should be in place by next year, Local Government Minister Simon Watts says.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday he released guidelines which replace the guidance developed in 2009 and supplemented in 2015.<\/p>\n
They were intended to help councils make full use of the tools currently available to them, promote responsible dog ownership and respond effectively when problems arose, Watts said,<\/p>\n
Too many Kiwis had been victims of dog attacks, “and we’ve even had loss of life”, he said.<\/p>\n
“We’re aiming to have our recommendations to enable us to take steps to legislate by the end of this year, and have that law in place next year.”<\/p>\n
The guidelines also included standardised reporting across councils to “improve data collection”, Watts added.<\/p>\n
“Better information will help build a clearer picture of dog control issues across New Zealand and support better decision-making.”<\/p>\n
Watts said standardised reporting was needed to guide the Dog Control Act, as it was difficult to review and change the legislation without it, but it was not yet mandatory.<\/p>\n
“The consideration around the mandatory nature of whether this will be required formally will be something that we’re considering through the legislation review that we’re undertaking at the moment.”<\/p>\n
ACC recorded more than 14,000 claims related to dog bites and attacks in 2025.<\/p>\n
“Whether stronger penalties for irresponsible owners are necessary, or more powers for council officers to deal with threatening animals – all options are on the table as we look to strengthen dog control laws to keep communities safe,” Watts said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An updated Dog Control Act should be in place by next year, Local Government Minister Simon Watts says.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-549588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}