Yes, and for any journey bringing a pet into Great Britain it is a legal requirement rather than a preference. You can only use certain travel routes and companies to enter Great Britain, and the routes should be checked before you travel because they can change or may only operate at certain times of the year. A pet taxi that crosses the Channel with your dog or cat must be using a carrier and a crossing that appears on the Animal and Plant Health Agency approved list, otherwise your pet will be refused entry at the border. GOV.UK
The one exception worth knowing is that you do not need to use an approved route if you are travelling within the UK or coming from Ireland. Everything else, including every crossing from France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal, has to run on an approved route with an approved company. That is the short answer. The longer answer explains what an approved route actually is, why it matters more than most owners realise, and what to ask an operator before you book. GOV.UK
What an approved route means in practice
An approved route is a specific combination of a carrier, a departure point and an arrival point that APHA has authorised for the movement of pet dogs, cats and ferrets into Great Britain. It is not a general permission granted to a company. It attaches to particular crossings.
That distinction catches people out. A ferry operator might be approved on one sailing and not on another. A route might run seasonally. APHA also notes that there are no approved routes into Wales at all, which surprises owners planning to arrive at a Welsh port. The approved lists are updated when carriers notify changes, so a route that worked eighteen months ago is not automatically valid today. Govwire
The practical consequence is that route selection has to happen at the point of booking, not on the day. If the crossing is wrong, no amount of correct veterinary paperwork will fix it at the barrier.
Which routes we use and why
We are based at 317A Cheriton Road in Folkestone, which sits a few minutes from the LeShuttle terminal. That location is not an accident of geography for a business doing this work. It means our default crossing into Great Britain is Calais to Folkestone on LeShuttle, which is an approved route, and it means our drivers run through the same Pet Reception process at Calais routinely rather than occasionally.
In our experience, the LeShuttle crossing works better than a ferry crossing for road based pet transport because the animal stays inside the vehicle for the full thirty five minute journey with the driver present, rather than being left unattended on a vehicle deck for ninety minutes or more while passengers are required to go above. On most ferry sailings, owners cannot remain with their pet during the crossing. On the shuttle, nobody is separated from anybody. For a nervous dog or a cat that has already had a long drive, that difference is significant.
That said, ferries have their place. Longer sea routes from northern Spain avoid days of driving through France, and for certain animals that trade is worth making. The point is that the choice should be a deliberate one based on the pet, not whichever crossing was cheapest that week.
Why the approved route is only half the compliance picture
Owners tend to focus on either the paperwork or the route, and the two have to line up together.
Coming into Great Britain, your pet needs a microchip, a valid rabies vaccination and either an EU Pet Passport or a UK health certificate. The waiting period after a first rabies vaccination is at least 21 full days before travel into Great Britain. Dogs crossing from Calais to Folkestone also need a tapeworm treatment administered by a vet between one and five days before entry, and the treating vet must record the date and time on the document. GOV.UK
We have found that the most common reason a journey runs into difficulty is not the route selection at all. It is the tapeworm window. Owners book the vet appointment for convenience rather than for the crossing time, and a treatment given six days before arrival is as invalid as one given the same morning. Because we set the crossing time when the booking is made, we work backwards from it and tell owners the exact window their vet appointment needs to fall inside. That check happens before the deposit is confirmed, while there is still time to move the appointment rather than the travel date.
The route and the timings are also linked on longer journeys. A run from the Costa del Sol takes two to three days on the road, so the veterinary window has to be calculated against the day the vehicle reaches Calais, not the day it leaves Spain. Getting that wrong is an expensive mistake, and it is the sort of thing that only becomes obvious once you have planned enough of these journeys to have seen it happen.
Questions to ask before you book any pet taxi
If you are comparing operators, these questions will tell you more than a price list will.
Which specific crossing will my pet travel on, and is it on the current APHA approved list. How many vehicles and how many drivers will my pet see between collection and delivery. Who deals with the Pet Reception checks at the border, the driver or me. What date does my vet appointment need to fall on, given the crossing time. And what happens if the crossing is delayed or cancelled.
An operator who cannot answer the first and fourth questions specifically is not planning the journey properly. In our experience the answers to those two are the clearest signal of whether a service knows the route or is simply driving it.
How our journeys are structured
We collect from your address and deliver to the destination door, keeping the animal in the same vehicle throughout wherever the journey allows. Owners are welcome to travel alongside their pet rather than sending them unaccompanied, and many do, particularly on relocations. If you are not travelling, we keep in contact through the route with updates.
We carry cats, dogs and ferrets with no restriction on breed or size, so a Chihuahua and a Great Dane are both accommodated, just in different configurations. Our fleet includes a Mercedes Vito, a Skoda Kodiaq, a Skoda Octavia and a Citroën, which lets us match the vehicle to the animal and to the amount of luggage rather than forcing every job into one van.
On the booking side, an initial payment of 50 percent secures the job. Once that is received, your LeShuttle ticket is confirmed and sent over, which also confirms the crossing your pet is booked onto. The remaining 50 percent falls due two days before travel, or you can settle in full in one payment. Payment is by bank transfer or by card through a secure payment link, with the card option carrying a 2.5 percent processing fee. If plans change we can issue a full refund excluding card fees provided we have at least 24 hours notice, though ticket type affects this. LeShuttle Flexi tickets are refundable, while Day Trip, Overnight and Short Stay Saver tickets are not.
Checking a route yourself
If you want to verify any of this independently, APHA publishes the current approved carriers and routes and the guidance sits on GOV.UK. It is worth a look even if you are using an operator you trust, partly because the lists change and partly because it makes the questions above easier to ask with confidence.
We have been running these crossings for around a decade, and the routes have changed more than once in that time. Nobody should be relying on memory for this, ourselves included, which is why the crossing is confirmed in writing at the point the ticket is issued rather than assumed.
Getting a route confirmed for your journey
Tell us the collection address, the destination, the travel window and what animal is travelling. We will confirm which crossing the journey will use, what the realistic timings are, and the exact date range your vet appointment needs to fall within. If the dates you have in mind do not work against the approved crossing schedule, we would rather tell you that upfront than after a deposit has changed hands.