British homes see boom in unwanted rodents

This has been caused by the governments council privatisation plans which took place in the 80's.
I was working as a an environmental health officer at mendip district council in shepton mallet in somerset. Pest control was part of my remit. When the council controlled this service the pest control operatives were required to deal with the reported problem, then to carry out search activities for which they were trained to do by the ministry of agricuture fisheries and food.They were also required to visit known trouble/breeding spots such as 'egg farms' and survey the areas for rat activity which was then reported to myself. We encouraged the owners of such premises to take out contracts with the council, so that regular inspections and treatments were carried out on a fortnightly or monthly basis, dependent up the volume of rat activity.
This and many other types of precautions and searches were regularly carried out and resulted in an extremely low rat problem.
The remit for the private pest control companies which came to the fore upon privatisation was to treat only the reported problem. The contracts prices we had with independant companies soared at the hands of the private pest control companies, to the point where the companies could or would not pay for them and the preventative measures stopped completely in the mendip area.Imagine the same thing happening UK wide. I even went onto a BBC radio program after I resigned my position and predicted what would happen if the private contractors remit were not revised. There were no revisions simply because to have the contractors carry out what our two pest control officers did would have cost more than the whole council pest control operations combined and thus would have meant that part of the privatisation would not have gone ahead. During the time of privatisation my warnings to councillors were ignored and I was effectively gagged from speaking out.

People who come out of fish and chip shops don't help by dropping takeaways all over the street.

You only have to look around any area where there is a Muckdonalds to see what brings the animals. Start with cleaning up the dirty disgusting people who leave the rubbish about.

you'll never get rid of them completely, but if everyone kept they're own space clean and tidy then that would help... unfortunately there are quite a lot of human vermin about who live filthy lives in filthy surrounding so not a lot we can do about that...I read somewhere that the only creatures that would survive world destruction would be the cockroach and rat.

One of the main reasons for vermins to multiply is lack of hygiene & cleanliness at home. Some house holders are sometimes too tired or too lazy to clean up after themselves just throwing food everywhere or not bining food related stuff properly. Furthermore, some people don't bother to clean their surounding of unwanted rubbish good enough for rodents to build their nest. All in all it's goes down to being clean & being considerate to others.

Don't blame the rats they are just doing their job. Blame those human '(b)rats' in our society who are are lazy, untidy and unclean. They are the real vermin!

@robert. our macdonald's used to clean up in a two block radius of their shop. they took it down to one block a year or so back and now don't bother. requests fall on deaf ears, so we have started picking it up, taking the garbage bags full of trash into their restaurant and putting it on their counter.

I live in a country area .... 3 lovely fat cats .... no rodent problems.

It has long been said that you are never more than six feet away from a rat in the UK

If your wheelie bin lid is closed a rat cannot get in. They climb drainpipes to get into loft spaces when the temperature outside drops. Last time I looked my loft was not squalid!!

my neighbours refuse to clean up after their dogsuse their garden as a toilet and they wonder why they have rats in their garden

ive seen how some people live, they live in disgusting environments, especially squatters, they find somewhere free to live, they dont spend time as a group cleaning up, making it reasonable living conditions and they dont seperate the food from the rubbish, this kind of environments rats love to feed off, they are hungry like us, they are here on planet earth like us, they want to eat, coz while there alive there bodys want to survive. So if people chose to live in squalid situations, then the rodents will come. Maybe there should be an alotment made just to feed the rodents and then they will be happy to stay out of the houses. Being obessed wit keeping things completely perfectly clean can be taxing on the system, but keep things generally clean can and will keep sickness at bay for sure. and as far as people squatting is concerned, they should learn to have respect for the buildings they have accomodated, becaause people spent alot of time money and energy making it all up in the 1st place. This should be a new law about squatting considering its legal in the uk. Yes squat, but yes respect your environment, therefore your health if not, live as a rodent. love hugs respect

And peoplethrowing their burgers/kebabs in the street at any time is a large part of the problem

the boomtown rats!

the rat population in birmingham is huge!

They’ve got vermin in the Houses of Parliament…and they’ve got rats as well.

England use to be a nice clean place, and in some rural areas it still is. You only have to look at the big cities, the amount of rubbish/food waste thrown around to know that this was inevitable. The problem will get worse before it gets better i'm afraid. Some people especially those that arrive in the UK from third world countries,or people who open cafe's and food outlets as well as being taught the English language need to be taught about cleanliness as well. I've seen people spitting and opening up their nostrils with the contents landing on the pavements, like its normal!!! Its disgusting!!

creepy eh?
imagine what it must be like in parliment its full of them

It is the filth some people are prepared to live in, that has seen the rise in the rat population.

Everybody is missing the point here, its not about your average Joe throwing a Kebab in the street, this is purely and simply Cut Backs, my friend works in Enviromental Health for a local authority, at least 2 years ago, the cut backs started, before anybody in the general population knew there a
was a problem, enviromental health was very hard hit, Bin Collections. Dog Wardens etc, her department went from 7 to 3 full time wardens ... Rat infrstation comes in 3 levels, level 1, you know they are there but you never see them, level 2, people start to see them on the streets, looking for food and level 3, which is epidemic, there are too many for the food available so they foridge, and the more they eat, the more they breed...United Utillities asked my friends authority to bait the sewers over a year ago, this they have tried to do but are vastly under manned.... Maybe David Cammeron can get out his magic flute and save us all