How to Get Rid of Grey Squirrels in a Greenwich Property

Start With the Law, Because Everything Follows From It

The grey squirrel is a non-native invasive species in Great Britain. It is an offence to release a grey squirrel back into the wild or to allow one to escape.

That single fact removes the option almost everybody asks about first, and asks about for entirely decent reasons: catch it and let it go in the park. No company can lawfully offer that. If somebody quotes you for a humane relocation, they are either misinformed or telling you what you want to hear.

Trapping also carries duties of its own. Traps must be of an approved type used in the way they are approved for, and they must be checked frequently so that nothing is left in one. Frequent checking means repeat visits, which is why this is a programme rather than a call-out.

Never Block the Hole

The most common and most expensive DIY mistake in squirrel work, and it is worth being emphatic about.

Sealing the roofline while animals are still inside traps them in the loft. They will do considerably more damage getting out than they were doing before - gnawing through timber, plasterboard and whatever else is between them and the outside. And if there are dependent young in a drey, blocking the entrance shuts them in with no adult able to reach them.

That produces exactly the outcome nobody wants, plus a smell in a ceiling void and a job that now involves opening up plasterwork to find it.

Proofing goes last. Always. If you have already blocked a hole and are now hearing activity inside, say so immediately at the enquiry rather than waiting for a routine appointment.

The Sequence

1. Survey. How many animals are likely present, where they are getting in, whether there is a drey and whether it may contain young, and what damage has been done to insulation and cabling.
2. Trapping programme. Traps sited where the animals are actually moving, checked on the required schedule, over a series of visits.
3. Confirmation the loft is clear. Not assumed - established.
4. Proofing the entry point. Only now, and quoted separately at £180, up to 1 hour.
5. Dealing with the route. Cutting back the branch, addressing the cable or the fence line, so the next animal does not have a road.

Why It Is Priced as a Programme

One published figure - £280 trapping service - covers the programme rather than a price per visit. Frequent trap checking is a requirement of doing the work properly rather than an optional extra, so charging per visit would be charging you for the obligation.

What Sits Outside the Price, and Why

These are separated deliberately. A single figure that quietly included work we cannot actually do is how a customer ends up paying for a repair that never happened.

If There Are Young in the Drey

It affects both the timing and the welfare of the job, and it is the question people are most reluctant to ask.

A drey in a loft may contain dependent young, particularly at certain times of year. Where the survey finds that, it changes how the work is carried out - and it is the strongest possible reason not to seal the roofline first.

We survey for it before anything is placed and we will tell you what we found. The work is carried out lawfully and humanely, and the sequence above exists precisely to avoid the situation where young are shut in.

What Does Not Work

• Ultrasonic and electronic deterrents. There is no good evidence they clear an established squirrel presence from a loft.
• Leaving a light or a radio on in the loft. Any effect is temporary; animals habituate.
• Blocking the hole. Covered above, and it is the one that actively makes things worse.
• Poison. Not an appropriate or lawful approach to this animal in this setting, and anybody offering it should be avoided.
• Waiting. The damage to insulation and cabling continues, and a roofline opening lets weather into the void whether or not the animal is still there.

What You Can Do That Genuinely Helps

1. Cut back overhanging branches - after the loft is clear rather than instead of dealing with the animals inside it. This is the single most useful thing a householder can do.
2. Note the times you hear activity and tell us. It shapes where traps are sited.
3. Take photographs of the roofline from the garden if you can see the damage.
4. Do not go into the loft repeatedly. Disturbance moves the animals around and makes the pattern harder to read.
5. Have an electrician look at any gnawed cable, separately and promptly.

How Long It Takes

Longer than a treatment and shorter than people fear. It is a series of visits over a period rather than a single call, and it continues until activity has stopped and the loft is confirmed clear.

What extends it is usually one of two things: a terrace where the entry point is not above your own property, or an entry route - a branch, a cable - that keeps supplying new animals into a territory that has just been vacated.

What Happens to a Trapped Animal

This is the question people most want to ask and most often do not, and websites in this trade tend to talk around it. You are entitled to a straight answer before you book rather than afterwards, so here it is.

Because releasing a grey squirrel back into the wild is an offence, a trapped animal cannot be taken somewhere else and let go. It is dispatched on site, humanely, by an appropriate and lawful method, by somebody trained to do it.

That is the whole of it, and it is why the relocation question matters so much earlier in the process. Anybody offering to catch and release is either describing something unlawful or is not being straight with you about what will actually happen to the animal.

The obligations that go with it are the reason the work is done the way it is: approved trap types used as approved, frequent checking so that nothing is left in a trap, and a survey beforehand for dependent young. If you would rather not proceed on that basis, that is an entirely reasonable position - and it is far better established now than on the day.