How Much Does Rat Control Cost in Greenwich? Flat & House Prices Explained

The Published Price

That is the standard treatment price, published so you can see it before you contact anybody. It is confirmed before the work is booked, not adjusted on the doorstep.

Why a House Costs More Than a Flat

The obvious answer would be that a house is bigger. That is not really it. The difference is how many places the survey has to reach before anything can be placed sensibly.

A flat is a defined space with a limited number of routes into it. In most cases the possible entry points can be checked in one pass: the kitchen, the service penetrations, the boxed pipework, the door thresholds and whatever the flat shares with the rest of the building.

A house brings four more places that all have to be looked at, and any of them can be the actual problem:

• A subfloor. A suspended timber floor has a void beneath it that a flat on a concrete slab simply does not have.
• A roof void. Accessible or not, it has to be assessed, and activity above a ceiling is a different job from activity under a floor.
• A garden and its boundaries. Decking, a shed base, a compost bin, a log store, a fence line - harbourage and travel routes that need looking at as part of the same visit.
• Its own drainage run. Inspection chambers, gullies and a connection to the main sewer that belongs to the property rather than to a building manager.

So the higher figure is not a size surcharge. It is four additional places where the answer might be hiding, and the time to look at all of them properly rather than putting product where the droppings are and leaving.

What Is Inside the Price

Why Proofing Is Not in the Figure

This is the part worth understanding before you compare us with anybody else, because it is where quoted prices most often stop being comparable.

Treatment removes the rats that are in the property. Proofing closes the way in. They are two different jobs needing two different sets of skills, and the amount of proofing a property needs varies enormously - some need none at all, and some need several hours of genuine work.

Bundling it into the treatment fee sounds generous and is usually the opposite: everybody pays for it, including the people whose problem was one open door on a hot night, and the people who need hours of it get whatever fits inside a fee that was never built for it. Priced separately, pest proofing is £180, up to 1 hour, and after the treatment you can decide whether to have us do it, have your own builder do it, or leave it.

When the Answer Is Not a Pest Control Price at All

Sometimes the survey finds something that no amount of treatment will fix. A defective or redundant drain connection is the common one in older Greenwich, Woolwich and Plumstead housing, and a rat entering through a broken connection is inside the building without ever crossing the garden.

In that situation we will tell you what we have found and what a drainage contractor should be asked to check. We will not quote you for repeat treatments around a route we know is still open. That would be the more profitable thing to do and it is not an honest way to work.

Landlords, Agents and Businesses

The same published figures apply. For a let property the practical value of a published price is that an instruction can be given without a survey first, and the report says what was treated and what remains a building repair - which is usually what the tenant, the agent and the landlord each need to see in writing.

Commercial premises are quoted on the same basis for a standard treatment. Where waste storage, delivery access or a shared yard is part of the problem, tell us at the enquiry so the survey covers it.

The Same Price Across All Seven Areas

Greenwich, Blackheath, Woolwich, Eltham, Charlton, Plumstead and Abbey Wood are all charged the same. There is no travel loading and no postcode adjustment, which is the point of publishing a figure in the first place.

What Happens on the Day

Worth knowing before you book, because rat work looks different from what most people expect and the first visit is mostly not treatment.

1. A conversation first. What you have seen, where, when it started, what has changed recently, and whether there are children, pets or wildlife to work around. That last answer changes what gets used and where it goes.
2. Then the survey. Inside and, for a house, outside as well - boundaries, outbuildings, drainage covers, the ground against the walls. This is the part that takes the time and it is the part that decides whether the treatment works.
3. Then placement. Control goes into the runs the rats are actually using, in secured points, rather than into the places that are convenient to reach.
4. Then the account of it. What was found, where the route runs, and whether anything found is a building defect rather than a pest problem.

You will not usually see a dramatic result on day one, and anybody promising you one is overselling. Rats treat anything new in a familiar route with suspicion, which is precisely why the follow-up matters more than the first visit.