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Rats in the garden in East London are treated by locating and treating burrows rather than internal voids, securing any rodenticide inside tamper-resistant bait boxes under the CRRU UK Code of Best Practice, and proofing the building so the population outside never becomes a population inside. Outdoor work carries wildlife risk that indoor work does not.
Garden treatment targets burrows dug into open ground, while indoor treatment targets runs through enclosed voids. A burrow is a tunnel system excavated in soil, normally with more than one entrance and a bolt hole hidden under a slab, a shed base or the root plate of a shrub. Indoors a technician works a fixed run inside a wall or floor void, and that space is closed. Outdoors the nest can be re-dug a metre away, abandoned, and reoccupied a fortnight later.
The boundary is open. A house has a countable number of entry points, and once they are sealed the building is sealed. A garden has a fence line, a party wall, a drain run, a rear alley and, in the long Victorian terraces common across East London, a shared back boundary with several other gardens. Nothing seals a garden.
A technician surveys a garden by walking its boundaries and mapping four kinds of evidence: burrow entrances, runs, droppings and gnawing damage. The survey comes before the product decision, because placement is dictated by where the animals actually move rather than by where one was seen.
Burrow entrances are smooth-edged holes in soil, almost always set against something solid — a wall footing, a shed base, the lip of decking, a raised bed. An active entrance has edges polished clean by fur and loose spoil fanned at the mouth. A disused one silts up and grows cobwebs across it.
Runs follow cover, because rats keep contact with a vertical surface as they travel. They show as flattened tracks along fence lines, wall bases, the edge of decking and the back of a shed, and as narrow tunnels through long grass. On brickwork at a pinch point, look for greasy smear marks where fur oil has transferred. Droppings are dark and spindle-shaped, clustered where the animals feed or rest, and gnawing shows on soft material: the bottom rail of a shed door, decking edges, the base of a downpipe.
Garden bait must sit inside a tamper-resistant bait box because outdoor placements are reachable by children, pets and wildlife. The CRRU UK Code of Best Practice is the rodenticide stewardship framework published by the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use, and it requires professional users to protect non-target species, record placements, and search for and remove carcasses.
Two exposure routes drive that rule. Primary poisoning is an animal eating the bait itself — a dog, a fox, a hedgehog or a garden bird finding a loose block. Secondary poisoning is a predator or scavenger eating rodents that have taken bait, which is how anticoagulant residues reach kestrels, owls, foxes and cats. All wild birds are legally protected, and birds of prey are precisely the species that hunt a garden where rats are dying.
Permanent baiting is restricted because the risk to children, pets and wildlife does not go away while bait stays out. The CRRU code does not treat leaving toxic bait out indefinitely as routine practice: it requires specific justification, a risk assessment and periodic review, because continuous exposure raises wildlife risk and encourages resistance in the rat population. How quickly the work is completed is therefore a wildlife question as much as a customer one, because every extra week of a programme is another week of bait sitting in a garden that foxes, hedgehogs and cats also use.
The alternatives are non-toxic monitoring blocks, which show where activity is without putting poison in the garden, break-back traps set inside boxes or tunnels so a child or a hedgehog cannot reach the jaws, and proofing. Product access is controlled too: a rodenticide must be authorised for the use it is put to, and several products authorised for open-area outdoor use are restricted to trained professional users, who must also assess the hazard of the substance before applying it and keep records of that assessment.
Rats use the same handful of garden features repeatedly, and each has a specific fix.
| Garden feature | Why rats use it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Decking | Dry, dark, undisturbed void sitting directly on soil | Mesh the perimeter with galvanised wire, buried at the edge; keep one inspection panel |
| Shed on a timber base | Void beneath the floor plus gnawable soft timber at the door | Raise it onto a hard base or mesh the underside; fit metal kick plates |
| Compost heap or bin | Warm nesting material and food in one place | Closed bin on slabs or mesh; keep cooked food, bread and meat out |
| Bird feeders | Spilt seed on the ground is a dependable daily feed | Catch trays, small quantities, sweep spillage; stop feeding during treatment |
| Ivy, brambles, overgrown shrubs | Continuous cover to travel and nest under, unseen | Clear a strip along fence lines and wall bases so runs become visible |
| Log piles and stacked materials | Ready-made harbourage with multiple bolt holes | Store off the ground on a rack, away from the boundary |
| Bin area | The single most attractive feature in most gardens | Hard standing, lids closed, no bags left beside the bins |
| Drain inspection chamber | A cracked cover or defective chamber opens a route to the sewer | Replace damaged covers; report suspected defects for a drain survey |
A garden bordering a railway embankment, canal towpath, park or a neighbour's neglected plot will see repeat rat pressure, because those spaces hold established populations nobody clears.
East London is full of such boundaries: the Regent's Canal and the Lee Navigation, the dock basins, railway and Docklands Light Railway embankments, and the long chains of Victorian rear gardens behind terraced streets. Add sustained redevelopment, where groundworks displace established colonies into surrounding streets, and one treated garden is a clearing in a much larger habitat.
The local authority has a duty to take steps to keep its district free of rats and mice so far as is practicable, and that duty is the basis for reporting activity on council-controlled land such as a park, a verge, an alley or estate grounds. Network Rail and the Canal and River Trust are the equivalent contacts for embankments and towpaths, and a report naming the exact location and the dates of sightings carries further than a general complaint.
Proofing the building matters more than clearing the garden because rats outdoors are a nuisance and rats indoors are damage — gnawed cable insulation, contaminated food, fouled loft insulation and occasionally a chewed pipe. A garden cannot be sealed, so the achievable objective is a sealed house beside a managed garden. That is why rats in the garden in East London are treated as a boundary problem as much as a garden one.
Proofing works because rats exploit small defects rather than making large ones. The usual list is gaps at soil and waste pipe entries, unsealed cable and gas service entries, defective or missing airbrick grilles, gaps beneath door thresholds, and open eaves reachable from a downpipe or a flat extension roof. Each is closed with hard material: mortar, expanding metal mesh, steel wool packed behind sealant, a replacement stainless airbrick cover, a metal threshold strip. Expanding foam on its own is not proofing, because rats chew through it.
Expect a written record of what was found, what was placed, what was proofed and what remains outstanding. Ask when the first visit can happen as well as what it will cover: 247 Pest Control states that same-day attendance is available across London and responds to emergency enquiries 24/7, while noting that attendance time cannot be identical for every call. What the visit produces is a species identification, a recommended treatment, and the earliest date that treatment can go ahead. Drainage repairs and structural proofing sit outside a treatment price at every firm, so ask for those separately and in writing.
Amateur rodenticides are sold for household use, but open-ground garden use is where pets and wildlife get poisoned. The CRRU UK Code of Best Practice requires professional users to secure bait in tamper-resistant boxes, record every placement and search for and remove carcasses, and several products authorised for outdoor open-area use are restricted to trained professionals.
Most straightforward garden programmes run to two or three visits across two to four weeks, with the interval set by how quickly activity at monitored points falls away. A garden backing onto a railway embankment, canal, park or neglected neighbouring plot may need ongoing monitoring rather than a finish, because the source population sits outside the boundary.
No. Backfilling a burrow without treating the population simply moves the excavation. Filling entrances is useful as a monitoring technique instead: loose soil pushed back out within a day or two confirms activity, and entrances that stay closed suggest the burrow is dead. Use it to measure progress, not as the treatment.
An occupier of land must notify the local authority where rats or mice are present in substantial numbers. A handful of sightings in a garden is not that. Where activity is heavy, persistent or clearly coming from council-controlled land, report it anyway, because the authority itself carries a duty to keep its district free of rats and mice.
Ask for the qualification, the insurance and the method statement. The RSPH Level 2 Award in Pest Management is the recognised baseline for a UK pest technician, and the British Pest Control Association (BPCA) publishes Codes of Best Practice. 247 Pest Control works with BPCA-certified technicians across Greater London and offers a No Reinfestation Guarantee, and any firm should give you its proofing recommendations in writing.