UK homeowners on rat alert

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Environment

Pest control companies have reported a 25 percent increase in rat-related call-outs in areas that have recently been flooded.

Experts believe that the vermin have been flushed from their sewer homes by the heavy rainfall.

Now the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) have advised that homeowners should take care to limit the creatures' food supply and access to homes.

"We know huge numbers have been washed out... where sewers have flooded, and there have been a lot of rat casualties," said CIEH director Julie Barratt.

"When people are cleaning up, block up holes and don't leave food lying around."

Some figures estimate that up to 81 million brown rats live in the UK.

Adam Hawley, vice-chairman of the National Pest Technicians Association, said: "We're having an incredible summer of rain, and the sewers and drains are not coping with the amount of flood water that inevitably flushes the rats to higher ground.

"With that, rats are trying to find some sort of dwelling to live in - whether they then try to move into people's garages or sheds, or into people's lofts to get away from the flood water.

"The knock-on effect is, potentially, that people's dwellings are getting rat infestations."

Brown rats are known transmitters of a number of diseases, including Weil's disease.

The only large areas of the world that are free of brown rats are the Artic and Antartic.