The rat postcode lottery: councils charge from £10 to £309.50 to deal with rats, and 29 have stopped altogether

Getting rid of rats at home can cost from £10 to £309.50 depending on which council you live under, and 29 councils have stopped offering pest control altogether, according to a new analysis of 368 councils in England, Scotland and Wales by Animal Control UK.

The free website checked every council's own pest control pages. Of the 101 councils that publish a household price for treating rats, the typical charge is £97.24.

Cheapest for rats: Darlington charges £10 (free to council tenants), Hinckley and Bosworth £20 and Knowsley £24.
Dearest for rats: Southampton charges £309.50 for a standard three-visit treatment, Southwark £267.12 plus an £89.16 inspection charge, Argyll and Bute £231.90 and New Forest £210.
18 councils charge more than £150 to treat rats; 8 charge less than £50.
Bed bugs: the typical council charge is £185.63, and Argyll and Bute lists £871.50 for fleas and bed bugs.
Wasps: the typical council charge is £79.20.
29 councils say they no longer run a pest control service, including Dorset, Shropshire, Walsall, Wigan, Ipswich and Moray, and 73 more say they do not offer one. Winchester stopped taking new bookings from 1 December 2025.
83 councils offer reduced or free treatment to residents on certain benefits.

Sam Allcock, editor of Animal Control UK, said: "Where you live now decides whether getting rid of rats costs a tenner or more than £300, and in a growing number of places the council will not come out at all. Rats do not respect council boundaries, but the bill for dealing with them very much depends on them. Anyone can now check exactly what their own council offers and charges."

Find the figures for any council

Every council has its own page, with each price it publishes, who pays less, and how to report a stray dog: animalcontrol.co.uk/councils. Every figure links to the council's own page.

Notes to editors

Animal Control UK checked the pest control pages of 368 councils in England, Scotland and Wales, starting from the pages GOV.UK links to from its "Report a pest problem" service, between 5 and 6 October 2026.
Prices are household (domestic) prices as each council publishes them, usually for one course of treatment of up to three visits. Call-out charges and survey fees are not compared with treatment prices. "Typical" is the median.
Northern Ireland is not included.
The full dataset is free to use with a credit: "Source: Animal Control UK analysis of council pest control charges", with a link to animalcontrol.co.uk online. Download the data.
Contact: Sam Allcock, editor, editor@animalcontrol.co.uk. Local figures for any council, on request, the same day.