Where can you legally put up lost pet posters?

• Ask first on private property — shops, cafes, vets, pubs, garden centres, community centres. Permission makes it legal and the poster lasts longer.
• Community noticeboards in libraries, village halls, supermarkets and parks are meant for exactly this.
• Lamp posts and street furniture belong to the council or the highway authority. Strictly, an advert there needs consent, and councils can treat unauthorised posters as fly-posting — but many are relaxed about lost pet notices for a short period. Ring and ask; most will tell you on the phone.
• Never on road signs, traffic lights, bridges, or motorway and dual carriageway furniture. That is a safety issue, not a paperwork one.
• Take them down once your pet is home. It is what keeps councils tolerant of the next person.

Outdoor advertising in England is governed by the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007, and the Government's guide for advertisers explains which adverts need express consent. A poster on a lamp post is an advert in planning terms, whatever it is about.

In practice, enforcement is about nuisance: laminated posters left up for months, cable ties that damage trees, posters on listed structures. A dated, tidy poster on a residential street, taken down afterwards, rarely troubles anyone.

• Every vet within three or four miles, including out-of-hours practices — they see found animals first.
• Local rescues, kennels and catteries.
• The park or green where your pet was last seen, at the entrances people walk in by.
• Your own street and the six or eight streets around it, especially junctions.
• Shops with foot traffic: the corner shop, the takeaway, the post office, the school gate noticeboard.
• Dog walkers and posties — hand them a poster rather than pinning one up. They cover the whole area every day.

Our free lost pet poster maker lays all of that out for you, and there is a version set up for cats. Both print on ordinary A4.

• One huge word at the top: LOST, with DOG or CAT underneath.
• A single clear photo, big. Not a collage.
• The road or landmark where they went missing, and the date.
• A phone number in large digits, and nothing else to read.
• Whether they are nervous, and not to chase them — the line that most often stops a sighting turning into a bolt.
• Weatherproofing: a poly pocket or a laminated sheet, taped closed along the top.

Paper reaches the people who aren't online. The fast half is the phone: the council's dog warden, the microchip database, local Facebook groups and the vets. Work through the lost dog checklist or the lost cat checklist first, then put the posters up.

Faster still is being reachable the moment somebody picks your pet up. A QR code pet tag means the person holding your dog or cat scans it and reaches you in seconds, long before anybody reads a poster.