A licencing application to a local authority

I am the chair of a small charitable concern and I am experiencing difficulty in getting the local authority concerned to process my application for a dog boarding licence. I had until recently been arguing that as a voluntary(non profitmaking society) that we did not in fact require what the authority term, a Commercial Boarding Licence. This has led to two of our volunteers being prosecuted ! We have had several individuals trying to sort matters out but no-one so far despite their best efforts have been able to 'straighten matters out'. We could do with someone who has some experience in licencing matters and perhaps understands the workings of rescue sanctuary organisations and who is pedantic enough to deal with a very unhelpful local authority. HELP!