I live in a city centre and an old building behind our house is being converted from commercial premises to flats. During the process, the builders appear to have disturbed some rats (according to our neighbour, they were doing something with the drains of the property recently) and we and our neighbours now have a rat infestation problem in our gardens, for the first time in the two years we’ve lived here. Our rubbish is put straight into a lidded wheelie bin and other than having a couple of bird feeders hung on branches (which we’ve had since we moved in, and which obviously can be easily removed) there’s nothing we’re doing lifestyle-wise to encourage them into the garden.
The problem is possibly complicated by the fact we’re in private rental. I know the general guideline is that if a pest infestation is caused by the tenant’s lifestyle it’s up to them to resolve, and if it’s a fabric-of-the-building failing it’s the landlord, but this is the fault of neither of us! Nevertheless, as our council doesn’t offer any form of pest control, not even advice, it’s going to cost to eradicate the problem.
Does anyone know where we stand? Do we just have to suck it up and pay ourselves? The building work is being carried out by a succession of sub-contractors and based on a couple of other issues that one or two of our neighbours have already experienced during the course of the renovation work, the response if we raised it with the project manager is likely to be along the lines of “prove it was us” / “not my problem”.
If we do have to resolve it ourselves, are we best paying for a pest controller or is there action we can take ourselves with proprietary products? I’ve never had a visible rat problem before! I don’t like the idea of killing them, plus our neighbour has a roaming cat so we wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt her, but equally I don’t want to turn them into someone else’s problem by catching and dumping – as I say, I live in a compact city so we’re all pretty much cheek by jowl.