Pest Control in Washington

Washington is a new town built in the 1960s across a collection of older villages and that mix of old and new creates an unusual range of pest problems. The original village centres like Washington Village, Fatfield and Barmston still have older stone and brick buildings where mice find easy entry through crumbling mortar joints and gaps around old window frames. The newer estates that connect these villages were built quickly and the cavity wall construction used across much of the town gives mice a network of hidden spaces to travel through once they find a way inside.

The town sits in a bowl of land around the River Wear and the river corridor running through the south side of Washington brings rats into the residential areas nearby. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Washington is a lovely feature of the town but the waterways and wetland habitat around it support a healthy rat population that spills over into the surrounding streets. Rat control is one of our most frequent calls from the Pattinson, Biddick and Fatfield areas, where housing backs onto the river and its flood plain.

The industrial estates at Crowther, Pattinson and Hertburn bring commercial pest problems too, with food businesses and warehouses needing regular monitoring to stay on top of rodent and insect activity. The green spaces and woodland strips that thread between the housing districts are a nice feature but they also provide routes for grey squirrels to move between areas and wasp nests turn up frequently in the mature trees and hedgerows that line these green corridors. The flat roofs on many of the town's commercial buildings and shopping precincts also attract nesting gulls in spring and summer.