A DOG RESCUE has bought a 46 acre farm to become a rehabilitation site for foreign street dogs.

Dogs 4 Rescue, which is based in Salford, has just bought Clough Bottom Farm near Accrington to rehabilitate the stray dogs to help them find their forever home.

Director Emma Billington of the not-for-profit company has said that the current site they have in Salford will will be used as a re-homing site while the Accrington farm will be used to home up to 80 dogs while they are cared for and rehabilitated to prepare them for adoption.

Emma said: "We are inundated now from everywhere, across the UK, across the world, with dogs desperately needing help.

"Dogs, in rescue, dogs in kennels that have shut down. It has kind of ended up that we have become a place for dogs that need rehabilitation.

"With the near 40 of them here, hardly of them are up for homing as it can take years to rehabilitate them so we needed another site where we could help the dogs most in need.

"Then we can have this place which we can use for dogs to find their forever home once they have been rehabilitated."

The planning application, which was submitted to Hyndburn Borough Council in mid-December, states that some work will be done to the site including the demolition of some of the buildings and construction of their replacement.

Emma has said that the main home and barn will remain as they are but they will be rebuilding some of the more damaged buildings to create the animal sanctuary.

Due to the location, some of the local residents have raised concerns over the centre and are concerned that the barking will be a disturbance however Emma has said that because of the freedoms the dogs have, they are less stressed and don't bark as much as you would associate with a normal kennel.

She added: "I can totally understand where people are coming from and all I can say is if they want any more information or they have any concerns I am very open.

"We don't want to upset anybody and we are really open to the local community or make anybody's life difficult and as I say, it's easy for me to say but we have a great relationship with our neighbours here.

"We have had noise surveys done here which monitored the noise over a 24 hour period and they came back and said there was nothing more than what you would expect from a neighbour who had a dog."

The company has been unable to get a mortgage so after finding the site in October, they began a fundraiser to bring in the money for the site which has raised £192,907 from over 7,500 supporters on top of private donations that people have sent directly to the company which raised enough for them to buy the site.