Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of (a) rodent and (b) rat infestations in urban areas.

No specific assessment of the effectiveness of the powers available to local authorities to tackle rat and mice infestations in urban areas has been made.

The Secretary of State has not had to use powers available to him under section 12 of the Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949 to empower persons to exercise rodent control functions on behalf of an authority which has been judged to have unsatisfactorily performed those functions.

In 2017, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) published estimates of the proportion of houses where mice and rats were present in England. This can be viewed at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15723-9

Higher prevalence was consistently observed in older and rented houses, when litter was present around a dwelling and when pets or livestock were present. The household and regional factors included in the analysis explained some, but not all, of the variation in rodent prevalence over time. This suggests that other factors not included in APHA’s models might also influence prevalence. The level of rodent control effort made by householders also varied over time, probably as a response to changes in rodent prevalence.

Defra has not received any representations from local authorities on rodent or rat infestations in urban areas in the last three years.