Staff inside one of the specialist kennels where seized XL Bullies say they ‘dread the phone ringing’ during school holidays when bites and attacks increase.
For the first time, camera crews were invited into one of the private kennels now regularly used to hold XL Bully dogs seized by police or abandoned by their owners since the ban was introduced across the UK in 2024.
The kennel, which was not named for safety reasons, is one of seven run by the same company which together now hold more than 500 XL Bullies.
One staff member Mark, whose name has been changed for anonymity reasons, is part of a team of people who are called by police to go and seize the dogs when they attack.
Hauntingly, he said the dogs are sometimes still with the bodies of their victims, adding it’s ‘bad with an adult’ but it’s even ‘harder’ when it’s a child.
Mark said he now ‘hates’ school holidays, including half-term and Christmas because attacks are more likely.
‘I dread the phone ringing, because the bites do increase during the holiday period and half-term and it’s just horrendous.’
Dog attacks in general have been rising every year since 2018 and at least six people have been killed in XL Bully attacks the 12 months following the ban.
BBC’s Panorama team were invited into one of the private kennels now regularly used to hold XL Bully dogs seized by police or abandoned by their owners since the ban was introduced across the UK in 2024
Footage shows 120 dangerous dogs, all either banned breeds or highly aggressive, at this one facility locked inside rows of metal cages with colour coded signs indicating their level of aggression
Police who deal with dangerous dogs believe the attacks are likely to get worse before they get better as dogs bought before the ban reach maturity.
Mark said cameras have never been allowed in the facility before but they granted access to BBC Panorama because ‘people need to understand what is happening in society and what they’re reading in the papers’.
‘They need to understand it. This is a problem,’ he added.
Footage shows 120 dangerous dogs, all either banned breeds or highly aggressive, at this one facility locked inside rows of metal cages.
Being locked up makes some become even more aggressive and others throw themselves at the bars in acts of self-harm.
Mark said the week before the Panorama team came to film, one dog had managed to break out of its kennel into the one next door.
On every cage hangs a coloured sign which indicates the individual dog’s aggression level – with green for the least and black for the most dangerous.
Before the XL Bully ban, Mark said 90 per cent of the dogs in their kennels were graded as green, but now just two out of the 120 inside have this grade.
A signs on a cage holding a black graded dog, a warning message reads: ‘Dangerously out of control, bitten a neighbour on the face, breached exemption.’
Another chilling sign says: ‘Bite score five, potentially fatal.’
The facility is ‘always at capacity’ and the breed filling the cages in the last few years are overwhelmingly XL Bullies.
Recounting some of the scenes he has been faced with when police call him to an attack, Mark said they are ‘like a horror movie’.
He has seen ‘too many life changing injuries’ in the last three years, stressing that they happen ‘more than people can even realise’.
This was evident when he received an urgent call whilst the Panorama filming crew were there from a police office asking him to help them save a person who was trapped in their car with their dog who had just savagely attacked them.
Before the XL Bully ban was introduced in 2024, owners in England and Waled were required to register their dogs and agree to muzzle them, insure them and have them neutered – a measure authorities hopes would eventually lead to the total eradication of the breed.
Mark said cameras have never been allowed in the facility before but they granted access because ‘people need to understand what is happening in society and what they’re reading in the papers’
However, there was no concrete way to enforce this other than hoping all owners came forward, but underground, illegal breeding can and does still take place.
Those who did not want to register their dogs and commit to the lifelong restrictions were offered the alternative of £200 in government compensation to have their XL Bully put down.
Similar legislation was also introduced in Scotland and Ireland in 2024.
Patrick O’Hara, tactical lead for dangerous dogs for the National Police Chiefs’ Council in England and Wales, told the BBC the number of dangerous animals needing to be held in kennels has increased by more than a third since the ban.
Police were spending around £4million housing dangerous dogs in kennels like this one in 2018, but this cost soared to an eye-watering £25million in the first year of the ban.
Mark said many of the seized dogs they hold once belonged to organized crime members.
Dogs seized due to a criminal allegation, such as owners breaking the rules of the ban or an attack, have to stay in the kennels until court proceedings are over.
They are then either returned or put down, but Mark said 85 per cent are handed back to their owners.
He said some of them should not be going home and the very real possibility they could end up coming back to the kennels after another attack ‘terrifies’ him, especially because there have been numerous instances of this happening.
Sadly, some of the dogs at Mark’s kennels have never attacked anyone and were instead abandoned after the ban came into place.
The RSCPA reported 21 XL Bullies being abandoned in England and Wales in the year before the ban, but this sky-rocketed to 129 abandonments in the six months after the legislation was brought into effect.
Law requires abandoned dogs to be held in kennels for one week to give the owners an opportunity to claim them.
If they are a banned breed, they are put down on day eight because they are not allowed to be rehomed.
Mark said he didn’t go into this line of work wanting to put dogs down, but explained that they can’t be rehomed because the risk of another attack is too high.
He said the ‘reality of the situation’ would mean being faced with a coroner and having to apologise for rehoming a dog which has attacked again because he ‘felt sorry for it’.
The family of a teenager who was mauled to death by an XL Bully called for owners to be subject to similar background checks as licenced gun owners.
Morgan Dorsett, 19, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, was killed by an XL Bully inside a flat in Bristol in February 2025 – just a year after the ban was introduced.
An inquest found the cause of her death were bites to her face and neck.
A woman has since been charged with having a dog dangerously out of control, causing injury resulting in death.
Morgan’s mother Marie is now calling for the legislation to be amended and tightened, with more focus and responsibility put on the owners, including background checks.
‘We can’t just have her die for no reason. Something needs to happen from this,’ the grieving mother added.
Morgan Dorsett, 19, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, was killed by an XL Bully inside a flat in Bristol in February 2025 – just a year after the ban was introduced
John McColl, 84, wandered onto a driveway in Warrington, Cheshire on February 24, 2025 when the XL bully attacked and savaged him
In February 2025, a pensioner was killed when an XL Bully that was chained to a shed outside its owner’s house attacked him.
John McColl, 84, died from his injuries a month after the brutal attack which saw the owner come home to find his dog ‘eating’ the elderly man.
The dog, called Toretto, had to be shot 10 times by armed police who rushed to the house in Warrington, Cheshire.
It was later found the dog had not been fed by the owner which caused it to become irritable and aggressive.
In March 2025, a man was killed by an XL Bully he was dog sitting for his friend who had been given the dog by a criminal before he went to jail.
Scott Samson’s remains were discovered alongside the dog in the blood-soaked living room of his home in Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
A statement issued to the BBC from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – the government body that deals with dangerous dogs – said it was ‘continuing to assess whether the current dog control rules are sufficient to ensure communities are protected’.
It added that the government ‘must balance the views’ of people who are critical of the ban with their ‘responsibility to ensure that the public is protected from dog attacks’.
It said it is engaging ‘closely with the police, local authorities, veterinary bodies and rescue and rehoming organisations to monitor the impacts and effectiveness of the XL bully dog ban’.
