A family-owned pet shop claims it ‘can’t survive’ in the short-term following an ongoing licensing dispute with its local council.

The town centre store has launched an online petition ‘Save Stafford Pets and Aquatics! in a bid to force the council into finding an amicable solution.

The store is also planning a peaceful protest outside the council offices on Monday (November 11).

Posting the online petition on change.org, the store’s Charlotte Pearson said: “To all our amazing customers and followers we really need your help.

“We set up Stafford Aquatics six years ago when we took over the building from fish world at the Paul Reynolds centre and are proud to be independent and a family owned business in our home town of Stafford.

 The last six years have been challenging at times with Covid lockdowns, our energy bills quadrupling two years ago and then the roadworks on Chell Road and the North end of town affecting us for the past 12 months. We have however battled on and thanks to you our loyal customers and our amazing staff team we have faced these head on and evolved.

“We are now however facing our biggest challenge to date and are asking for your support.

“Following a confusion on dates with the licencing team at Stafford Borough Council, we ended up submitting our renewal forms one day late, having delivered them in person (after the original ones that we submitted by post in June were lost/not received). This now means we have had to apply for a brand new pet shop licence as the old one expired the day before (despite me having had one for the last six years) and we are unable to sell livestock until a new inspection has been completed.

“The date the council have given for this new inspection is the 19th December and a guide that the licence is likely to be issued mid Jan 2025! This is completely unrealistic and the business cannot survive for three months without this trade. We have a wonderful team of four people and we all love working in this industry.

“We are in daily communication with the council to try and bring this date forward but haven’t had much success in the past week.

“Please sign so we can present this to the council and save us from becoming another empty unit in Stafford Town!”

The online petition can be found by clicking here.

Will Conaghan, press and communication manager for Stafford Borough Council, said: "A great deal has been done to help Stafford Aquatics as we wish to support all local businesses. We sent Stafford Aquatics a renewal notice in May - four months before the licence renewal date. They were also reminded in August. And we reminded them again just before that licence expiry date of September 21.

"Following that email we spoke with the business and to help them out agreed to extend the date for the council receiving the application to October 16. After that date it would have to be treated as a new application. But in all that time no application or application payment was received for the renewal of the licence. 

"So, as it was not renewed by that extended date it became a new application. This requires an inspection to be carried out to ensure the business has the appropriate standards regarding the welfare of the animals at the premises. That inspection will be carried out by Staffordshire County Council Animal Health team and until that is done we cannot grant a licence. We have been liaising with the county council to see if that can be undertaken as soon as possible.” 

Will added that Stafford Pets and Aquatics can appeal against the council decision if they think it is wrong.