Snowball effect of bad weather ‘could lead to pest infestation’

This is a sponsored post brought to you by HomeServe, Britain’s home emergency repair service.

Many of us will be aware of some of the basics of avoiding a pest infestation.

Few people want to live in a dirty hovel, so most homes have at least a basic standard of hygiene – though obviously, the cleaner your house is, the less likely you are to get a visit from an unwelcome furry visitor.

Most of the best ways to keep your home rodent-free are based on simple common sense, including:

• Keeping areas such as kitchens clean and not allowing food debris to build up anywhere in the home.

• Making sure doors and cupboards are secure will help to make your home less easy to navigate if a rat does make its way into your house.

• Keeping your garden tidy is also essential – rats love feasting on bags of rubbish or sleeping in cosy, damp compost heaps, so these risk factors should be considered when looking at ways to avoid a pest infestation.

However, no matter how hard you work on keeping your house and grounds in good order, unfortunately you can’t account for the actions of your neighbours – or your local council’s rubbish collectors, for that matter.

This is something that residents of an area of Blackburn have learned the hard way recently after waiting weeks for bin men to come and collect their rubbish.

According to This Is Lancashire, the bins were left unemptied for six weeks over the Christmas, leading residents in homes on Park Lee Road and Lynthorpe Road fearing an infestation of rats.

Mother-of-three Judith Day called the scenes disgraceful, commenting: “The council need to organise themselves because we have bad weather every year and it is just ridiculous that every year they seem to drag their feet.”

Joanne Edmundson, another resident, added: “Things can’t just stop working because we have a little bad weather. It’s absolutely disgusting out the back and we are worried that about hygiene and rat infestations.”

Responding to the complaints, operations manager for Blackburn with Darwen Council Terry Trayler said that households had been given extra bags for their rubbish and said sending trucks to pick up rubbish on the designated days could have caused an accident.

“We have extra crews on this week dealing with the backlog and the bins will be emptied today,” he remarked.

Although the residents of Blackburn can look forward to cleaner streets now the snow and ice has thawed, there’s no reason why any rats attracted to the area will be leaving any time soon.

For this reason, the residents may be advised to look into pest extermination cover, a type of insurance that protects households against the effects that an infestation can cause.

Rather than hoping the problem will go away or buying dodgy traps from the internet, people who take out this type of cover can be sure that any unwelcome visitors to their home will be sent packing just as quickly as they arrived.