News

The rat population is exploding in areas where fortnightly bin collections have been introduced according to a national survey, but Shepway appears to have bucked the national trend.

Across the country calls to pest controllers have more than doubled, the National rodent Survey 2008 survey reveals.

About half the councils in England have opted for fortnightly collections, despite warnings two years ago from Government scientists. And collections could even be cut further, to once a month.

Critics say the new collection rota, with household waste like food collected one week and recyclables the next, means that bin bags full of rotting food can lie outside homes for up to 14 days, attracting maggots, flies, rats, squirrels and foxes.

Families that forget to put their bins out face having the waste festering for a month.

However the figures for Shepway District Council, which took part in the survey, do not support the findings and have shown no appreciable increase since 2006.

Shepway had a total 555 calls involving Brown Rats in 2007, compared with 592 in 2006.

A Shepway District council spokesperson has told the Gazette that to date since April 2008 there have been just 428 reported incidents.