Moving a pet from Great Britain to Australia

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The short version

The United Kingdom is a Group 3 country for Australian pet import — the classification with the full rabies pathway. The Australian listing reads “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, and the identity-check arrangement covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

identity check (two OV66 vets) → rabies work → RNATT → 180-day wait → import permit → quarantine booking → treatments → EHC → travel to Melbourne → 10 or 30 days at Mickleham

Allow at least six months, realistically closer to a year.

What makes the British corridor distinctive: OV66

Not every Official Veterinarian can prepare a pet for Australia. The vet must be authorised by APHA as an OV under OCQ(V) SX or OCQ(V) CA, and hold the OV66 authorisation specific to exporting dogs and cats to Australia.

That authorisation governs the rabies preparation, the identity checks and the export health certification. Finding an OV66 vet is a real constraint, not a formality — APHA can help you locate one, and it is the first call to make.

The identity check needs two of them. Two different OV66-authorised OVs, from different practices that are not associated — two practices within the same corporate group are acceptable. Each completes a separate ID declaration and emails it, with the colour photograph, to DAFF at catdogidcheck@aff.gov.au from their own email address registered with their OV66 authorisation. DAFF only accepts declarations from OVs on the APHA/DAERA approved list.

The date that counts is the date the second OV completes the verification, and both dates must be at least 180 days before your scheduled export.

The trap for anyone who has already started

This arrangement began on 4 November 2024. Before it, pets from the UK served a minimum of 30 days in quarantine unless they qualified as returning Australian animals.

If you began preparations before the identity check existed — or simply skipped it — you cannot bolt it on:

• DAFF cannot recognise an OV66 identity check completed after the RNATT blood was taken.
• If you restart preparations to get the identity verified, any RNATT done beforehand becomes invalid, and the 180-day wait restarts from the day the new sample reaches the laboratory.
• A permit already granted for 30 days cannot be converted to a 10-day permit without meeting the identity requirements.

So the choice is stark: accept 30 days, or restart and lose six months. Worth roughly AUD 1,120 in quarantine costs — which is why it is worth pricing honestly before you decide.

One exception: a dog returning to Australia can use its Australian export permit as proof of identity and does not need the OV66 process at all to qualify for 10 days.

The RNATT, in British terms

The blood sampling date must fall between 180 days and 12 months before export, and where you are preparing for 10-day quarantine the sample must be collected by an OV66-authorised official veterinarian. The test must be done by an officially authorised laboratory; APHA publishes a list of approved rabies serology laboratories in the UK.

The certificate

The export health certificate for dogs is EHC 2580; cats use 2432. Applications from England, Scotland and Wales go through the online EHC service — you need a Government Gateway account and a Defra account. Northern Ireland applies through DAERA’s DECS process.

Every page must carry the signature, date and stamp of the official government veterinarian, plus the stamp of the government veterinary administration, and the date must be in day/month/year format.

Alongside the general British export rules: a pet leaving Great Britain for a non-EU country needs an export health certificate, you nominate the official vet who receives it, and an export application form (EXA) is completed in England, Scotland and Wales.

What this page does not cover

• Finding an OV66 veterinarian — that is APHA’s Centre for International Trade.
• The cat certificate 2432 guidance in the detail given here for dogs.
• Airline selection, crates and transit countries.
• Costs beyond the government’s own estimates.