Why Do Rats Problems Keep Coming Back in Greenwich Properties?

The Pattern

It goes like this. Something is done. The noise stops. Two or three weeks of peace, sometimes longer. Then a dropping in the same cupboard, or the same scratching in the same part of the ceiling, and the whole thing starts again.

That pattern is diagnostic. A population that was genuinely cleared does not reassemble itself. A property that goes quiet and then returns is telling you either that the treatment reached part of the population, or that the property is still available to the next one.

1. The Entry Point Was Never Closed

The commonest reason by a wide margin, and the reason proofing is priced separately on this site rather than being a line item nobody reads.

Treatment removes the animals that are in the property. If the route in is still open, the property has been cleared and left available. In a city there is always another rat, and the interval between one leaving and the next finding the same opening is exactly the length of your quiet fortnight.

Proofing is £180, up to 1 hour and is done after activity has stopped. If you would rather your own builder closed it, that is fine - what matters is that it gets closed.

2. The Route Is Below Ground

This is the one that catches people out, because there is nothing visible to close.

A defective drain, a cracked connection or an unsealed redundant branch is a route into a building that no amount of proofing at ground level reaches. The animals are inside without ever crossing the garden, which is why the property can look perfectly sealed and still keep producing activity.

It is a realistic explanation in the older housing across Greenwich, Woolwich and Plumstead, where the drainage is of a similar generation to the buildings. The fix is a drainage repair, and where the evidence points that way we will say so rather than sell you another treatment.

3. The Source Is Next Door

Rats do not recognise a boundary. A terrace shares a subfloor and often a roof void; a converted house shares everything; and a neighbouring garden with a long-standing problem, an accessible bin store or a fed population of birds will keep supplying the whole row.

Treating your side while the source sits on the other side of a wall is a holding operation. It is worth knowing that before you book, and it is worth asking the neighbours - a coordinated instruction, or one through a freeholder or managing agent, is a different and far better piece of work than three separate treatments in one terrace.

4. The Food Source Is Still There

The one entirely within your control, and the one most often overlooked because it does not feel like a pest control issue.

• Spilled seed under a bird feeder.
• An open or damaged compost bin, particularly one sitting directly on soil.
• Bin bags stored on the ground rather than in a closed bin.
• Pet food left out, or fed to foxes or birds deliberately.
• A neighbouring commercial bin store with poor housekeeping.

None of these creates a rat problem on their own. All of them keep one going, and a property with a reliable food supply will be recolonised faster than one without.

5. The Treatment Reached Part of the Population

Sometimes it is the treatment, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than listing four external causes and stopping.

The usual version is a single visit with no follow-up. Rats are neophobic; the first placement is often approached slowly, and what has been taken by the second visit is the actual measure of progress. A job that consisted of one visit and no return has not established whether the population was cleared - it has established that the noise stopped, which is not the same thing.

The other version is placement in convenient locations rather than in the runs being used. Product in the middle of a garage floor is product a rat walks past.

What a Realistic Result Looks Like

Nobody can promise you will never see a rat again. What is achievable is a property that rats pass through rather than move into: the route closed, the food source removed, the harbourage cleared, and the population that was inside dealt with properly.

Where one of the five reasons above is outside your control - a neighbour's garden, a shared void, a drain that is not yours - we will tell you, and we will tell you what a realistic result looks like in that situation rather than selling you an annual treatment and calling it maintenance.

If It Has Already Been Treated Twice

At that point the useful thing is not a third treatment, it is a proper look at which of the five causes above is in play - and there are four questions that usually settle it.

1. Was any proofing done, and by whom? If the answer is none, the answer to the whole problem is probably that.
2. How long was the quiet period, each time? A consistent two to three weeks points at a network that was partly reached. Months, then a return each autumn, points at seasonal ingress through an open route.
3. Is there anything you have not been able to look at? A sealed subfloor, an inaccessible eaves run, an inspection chamber that has not been lifted.
4. What are the neighbours seeing? In a terrace or a converted house this is not a courtesy question - a shared void changes what the job is.

Tell us those four answers at the enquiry and the survey starts from a much better place than it would otherwise.