Sewer Baiting Cuts: Who Deals With the Rats Now?

Rats have always lived in the sewers, and for decades somebody quietly kept their numbers down. Often it was the local council, often with some help from the water company, and the job got done without most of us ever thinking about it. That arrangement is starting to come apart, and pest controllers are the ones finding out first.

Sewer baiting cuts: a saving that lands somewhere else

In Northern Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph reported fears of a rat plague after NI Water ended a sewer baiting operation to cut costs. It is worth knowing how that work used to run. A Belfast City Council service update from June 2023 describes the council baiting sewers on NI Water’s behalf, with NI Water providing some financial support. The same update recorded sewer baiting requests up 25% and outdoor rat sightings up 20% on the year before. Demand was already rising before the money went.

It is not only a Northern Ireland story. In 2022, Milton Keynes Council passed a motion asking Anglian Water to have sewer baiting reinstated, which says a lot about what had already changed. Across England, water company websites now read much the same way. Anglian Water says it does not offer pest control services and refers people to the council where its sewer has no defect. Thames Water will investigate its sewer once a council or pest controller has confirmed that is where the rats are coming from. Wessex Water asks people to contact the council first.

The message is consistent. Water companies see their job as the pipes. Rats, in their view, are a public health matter for someone else.

Who is actually responsible for rats in drains and sewers?

The water companies have a point, at least on paper. Under the Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949, which applies in England, Wales and Scotland, it is the local authority’s duty to keep its district free of rats and mice as far as practicable. Occupiers must tell the council when rats are present in substantial numbers, and the council can serve notice requiring an owner to treat the problem or carry out structural repairs. Nothing in the Act places a rat control duty on water companies, and an independent water industry adjudication in 2018 reached the same view, that primary responsibility sits with the local authority.

Ownership of the pipes matters too. In England and Wales, shared private sewers and lateral drains transferred to the water companies on 1 October 2011. What stayed private is the drain that serves a single property and sits within its boundary. In Northern Ireland, NI Water owns the public sewers, and owners remain responsible for the drains within their boundary.

So once a rat has made it out of the public sewer and into a property’s own drain, the defect, the repair and the rat are the owner’s problem. The water company will fix its own broken pipe, but it is not coming round to deal with the rodent in your customer’s kitchen.

Councils are stepping back too

If the water companies are pointing at the councils, you might expect the councils to pick it up. Many are doing the opposite. A Freedom of Information study published by Direct Line (now part of Aviva) in April 2025 found councils carried out 291,132 pest control visits to homes in 2024, around nine in ten of them for rodents. It also found that 24% of councils now offer no pest control service at all, and only 5% treat rats for free. The rest charge, in some cases well over £200 a visit.

Some councils are already having second thoughts. Calderdale scrapped its pest control service, and in September 2026 its own cabinet member described that decision as “at best short sighted” in the Yorkshire Post. In Northern Ireland, nidirect notes that only some councils treat rats at all, and several offer advice only.

Where the work goes

Put those pieces together and the direction is clear. Less baiting in the sewers, fewer councils treating rats, and the legal responsibility resting firmly with property owners. The work does not disappear. It moves to private pest controllers.

Rats in drains are central to it. Writing in the BPCA’s Professional Pest Controller magazine, Darron Pearce estimated that around 80% of rat infestations in homes start in the drainage. That is one practitioner’s estimate rather than a study, but anyone who has traced a rat back to a cracked pipe or a missing cap will recognise it. Every one of those jobs is a visit, a report, often a follow-up, and increasingly a conversation about drain repairs that the customer is now paying for.

For a one or two person firm, that is good news with a catch. More work only helps if you can get through it without your evenings disappearing into paperwork.

More rat jobs, without drowning in admin

This is the problem we built PestOS to solve. It is pest control software made for UK pest controllers, a job, diary and reporting app designed alongside a working pest control business, and it takes the admin out of each visit so there is room for more of them.

Recurring contract visits that book themselves into your diary
A guided on-site report, finished and signed before you leave
Branded PDF reports emailed to your customer straight away
Site photos, GPS and timestamps as proof you attended
Product label checks, COSHH filled in automatically, and rodenticide justification built into the flow
Room for a technician or trainee when you are ready to take one on

When the report takes minutes instead of an hour, a busy week stops feeling like a threat. The drain job that leads to three follow-up visits becomes something you welcome rather than dread.

Water companies and councils have made their choices. If more of this work is coming your way over the next few years, is the way you run your jobs today ready for it?

Sources

Belfast Telegraph, “Fears of a rat plague surface after NI Water kills off sewer baiting operation to cut costs”. belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Belfast City Council, Pest Control Service Delivery Update, 13 June 2023. minutes.belfastcity.gov.uk
Milton Keynes Council, “Baiting the Sewers” motion, 21 December 2022. milton-keynes.moderngov.co.uk
Water company guidance on rats (accessed October 2026): Anglian Water, Thames Water, Wessex Water
Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949. legislation.gov.uk
WATRS adjudication decision WAT/0706, 3 May 2018. cedr.com
Defra, Private sewers transfer guidance, September 2011. gov.uk
nidirect, sewer ownership guidance and pest control services
Direct Line (an Aviva brand), “Rat race: councils tackling pest infestations every two minutes”, 9 April 2025. aviva.com
Yorkshire Post, Calderdale pest control service, 17 September 2026. yorkshirepost.co.uk
Professional Pest Controller (BPCA), Darron Pearce on drains and rats, 3 May 2024. bpca.org.uk