Client Spotlight: Pets 2 Places

Most pets travel in cars with little or no protection, even though, in a collision, an unrestrained dog can become a serious danger to itself, its owner, and emergency responders.

This is something Claire, founder of Pets 2 Places, sees every day. As a UK-based pet transport and taxi service, Pets 2 Places supports animals and their owners across the country. Through this frontline work, Claire has witnessed just how inconsistent and risky pet transport really is.

Pets 2 Places is now leading a national initiative to improve safety, accessibility, and standards in pet transport across the UK, alongside the development of a new range of pet safety travel products.

Why This Project Exists

Millions of pets are transported every day without proper restraint. While the Highway Code sets expectations, there is no clear or enforceable UK framework for pet safety in vehicles.

That lack of clarity puts animals at risk, increases danger for drivers and passengers, and makes the job harder for emergency services attending road incidents. Despite how often this happens, there’s surprisingly little data to show the scale of the problem. Pets 2 Places exists to change that, turning an overlooked issue into a priority.

Why We’re Involved

At our core, here at Inond, we want to make a real, positive impact through every project we support, work that helps people, improves safety, and makes a genuine difference in the world.

We take a human-centred (and in this case an animal-centred) approach, starting with real experiences, real behaviours, and real risks. This project aligns strongly with our values: it’s rooted in lived experience, backed by evidence, and focused on creating solutions that people can actually use and trust.

Our role is to help turn insight into action, combining research, design, and strategy to ensure this work doesn’t stay theoretical, but becomes something that delivers real-world change at scale.

What the Project Involves

The project brings together research, design, engineering, compliance, and policy expertise to drive real, evidence-led change. The work focuses on four key areas: building credible research into pet transport safety, turning that insight into practical and crash-tested solutions, raising public awareness to encourage safer behaviour, and engaging policymakers to improve guidance and future legislation.

Where the Project Is At

Over the past year, the project has moved from idea to credible delivery. We’ve supported Pets 2 Places through visits to the Cranfield Impact test facility, hosted focus groups and workshops, including a User Insights Workshop at the NatWest Accelerator space in Milton Keynes and an Opportunities Workshop at MK:U. We also made introductions to academia, lobbyists, strategy consultants, and regulatory experts. Legislative research, policy positioning, and early-stage product development are already underway, alongside the growth of a strong network of contacts.

To keep things moving while funding is secured, Pets 2 Places has joined our monthly membership model. This gives us dedicated time each month to continue pushing the project forward, with an initial focus on the first phase: building credible research, developing a crash-tested safe dog harness for dogs under 15kg, and identifying gaps in current legislation and public education around pet transport safety.

As the Pets 2 Places team puts it:

“Really the only thing holding us back from launching the products is a lack of the money to get started. I’m not going to let this small amount of money get in the way of realising this dream.”

At the end of January, Pets 2 Places will be launching a GoFundMe campaign to take the final steps towards product launch and wider impact.

Want to support this project or do you have an idea?

Click here to find out more and get involved.