AN ORDER requiring dog owners to pick up their pets’ mess and banning dogs from enclosed children’s play areas is to be renewed in Carmarthenshire.
The public spaces protection order, as it’s known, also requires owners to put their dog on a lead when asked to do so by council officers when such restraint is reasonably necessary to prevent annoying or disturbing behaviour by the animal.
Carmarthenshire Council first introduced the order, which expires every three years, in 2016 and has renewed it twice since.
It consulted on the latest proposed renewal and said the vast majority of respondents supported another three-year extension.
A report before cabinet said one county councillor suggested additional controls on dogs on sports pitches and park areas, along with a new fenced-off area dedicated to dog exercise. The report said additional controls could be considered but would need to be evidence-based and subject to a separate consultation.
Since the order first came into force in 2016 there have been 3,425 dog fouling complaints up until the end of December last year. The council has issued 136 fixed penalty tickets to offending owners and prosecuted seven of them for not paying up.
The report said: “A small number of complaints have been received about dogs in play areas and enforcement action has been taken against four people. We believe that the provision excluding dogs from children’s play areas and the accompanying signage which we have erected at relevant sites have served as an effective deterrent.”
Cabinet members approved the renewal of the order with effect from July 1. It won’t apply to dogs trained by a registered charity to help a person with a disability and upon which that person relies on for assistance.
Cllr Aled Vaughan Owen said: “There is a clear case for extending this order and I believe that this continues to protect the enjoyment of our areas, so I propose the approve the extension as noted in the report.”
A ban on dogs on sports pitches had been proposed by a council scrutiny committee in 2022, but the authority said a few months later that the evidence wasn’t there to justify it.
In April this year the council sought the public’s help in identifying a person shown on CCTV images not picking up after their dog on Clifton Terrace, Llanelli.
In February a woman from Penygroes was fined in magistrates’ court for not clearing dog mess from her garden after being repeatedly being told to do so. The defendant, who had pleaded guilty, had to pay legal costs of £3,470.50p as well as a £215 fine and a £86 victim surcharge.
