POLICY
Living with pests
Public health pests have the potential to:
- Contaminate your home
- Spread diseases to yourself and your family
- Damage your belongings
- Ruin food, property and reputations
- Make you feel miserable and trapped in your own home.
Insects, rodents and birds can easily contaminate food and work surfaces with their excreta, hairs or body parts. These are potential pathogens that spread disease.
Parasites carried by pest species (such as fleas) can also be passed on to humans, causing illness and stress. For example, that's how the outbreaks of bubonic plague are still transmitted in Madagascar.
Luton mum's horror at finding mouse droppings in toddler’s bed
The pest control and the housing officer keep blaming each other. My mental health has declined and I have had to go on medication. I’m not going to have my daughter walking around where there are mice.
Luton Today / 10 May 2022
Inadequate housing
The older a building is, the harder it is to protect from pests.
A mouse can squeeze through a gap the size of your finger. A rat can climb a drain and enter a loft at breakneck speed.
Lazy landlords can leave tenants open to infestation through poor maintenance, slow action on repairs and inadequate waste management facilities. And many are also slow to act once an infestation has been reported.
New homeowners also may have no idea that their property has an active infestation, or is at risk of infestation, until after they move in.
Assessing pest risk
Buyers and renters cannot objectively understand the pest risk associated with a property.
Renters should know that their home is safe from the misery of a pest infestation before they sign a tenancy agreement.
Homeowners should be able to demand a pest-risk assessment like they would a building survey. However, there is no national standard for protecting homes from pest ingress. Currently, householders have no clear way to check if the property they intend to rent or purchase has an infestation, or is likely to be at risk of infestation in the future.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
Develop a PestSafe scheme to proactively keep homes pest-free. Make the scheme mandatory for landlords and social housing. Encourage homeowners to demand PestSafe reports before they purchase a property.
This policy aims to establish a unified standard for pest management practices across various sectors, including social housing, private rental and new home markets.
The objective is to ensure that everyone can live in environments free from the threats posed by pests, which include disease transmission, property destruction, and emotional distress.
Implementing a PestSafe scheme would assure individuals regarding the level of pest activity in their homes, thereby promoting health and well-being.
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