Rats can transmit a number of serious diseases, cause damage to property, and contaminate food. To prevent rats becoming pests we recommend that you:
- Keep food in containers with tight fitting lids
- Tidy your house and garden - less clutter means less places to hide
- Place rubbish bags in bins with secure lids
- Clean up pet food and bird seed debris
Lewes District and Eastbourne Borough Councils offer free home treatments for rat infestations. All treatments are undertaken by qualified pest control technicians in our Neighbourhood First operations team.
We will visit you at home to assess the problem and find the most suitable place to put poison bait, taking into account risks to the safety of your family, pets and other wildlife. We will give you information about the type of bait used and we will ask you to sign to give us permission to use it.
During the visit, we may make recommendations to repair issues at your property (such as filling in holes, or repairing drains or air vents) in order to prevent further infestations. It’s important that you try to follow our advice so that the treatment is more likely to be successful and the infestation is less likely to return.
We will book your initial pest control visit for the morning, between 8AM and 12PM on a convenient day for you. Follow-up visits are carried out in the afternoons, and we will arrange these with you in person when we first visit.