Pest Control Leek

Pest Control in Leek

Leek is a market town on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorlands, sitting in the valley of the River Churnet with the Peak District rising to the north and east. The town has a strong industrial past in silk and textiles and the old mill buildings, cobbled streets and stone terraces give the centre a real sense of place. Those stone buildings are attractive but they come with pest control challenges. The local gritstone is hard-wearing but the lime mortar between the blocks erodes over time and mice only need a gap of about six millimetres to squeeze through. Many of the older properties in the centre around the Market Place, St Edward Street and Derby Street have cellars used for storage or as workshops and these below-ground spaces are where rats often show up first. We deal with rat control in Leek right across the town, but the older centre with its stone buildings and cellar spaces is where problems tend to be most stubborn.

The River Churnet and its tributary streams flow through the valley bottom and rats use these waterways as routes through the town and the surrounding countryside. The residential areas climbing the hills on either side of the valley, along Buxton Road, Ashbourne Road and the estates at Haregate and Westwood, are mainly stone-built terraces from the Victorian era and inter-war semis higher up. Mouse control in Leek is one of our most common jobs here and the exposed hillside position means that mice are particularly keen to get inside when the weather turns cold and wet, which in the Staffordshire Moorlands can be most of the year.

The moorland and farmland surrounding Leek support large numbers of field mice and rats and the houses on the edges of town that back onto open land see the most consistent pressure. Wasp nests are a summer fixture, with the stone walls and slate roofs of the terraces providing sheltered nesting spots. The cooler moorland climate means the wasp season starts a bit later and finishes earlier than further south, but when it is on it keeps us busy.