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Rat problems 'growing in city'

4:43pm Wednesday 21st November 2007

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AN OXFORD resident used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the latest statistics on rats - and says the figures prove the rat population is growing.

Annie Skinner, who has lived in East Oxford since the 1960s, says she has been plagued by rats at her Marston Street home this year.

Mrs Skinner believes rat infestations have increased since the switch to fortnightly waste collections a year ago.

She said: "I didn't believe that the number of rat call-outs had actually fallen so I used the Freedom of Information Act to get the latest figures. The figures do show that the number of rat call-outs for the council has actually increased over the past six months so why does the council keep insisting the number of call-outs is going down?"

In September, when she asked the city council what she should do with a dead rat she had found in her garden, she said she was told to bury it or burn it by environmental health officers.

She also had rats outside her home during the summer and, despite putting poison down, the creatures returned.

The figures obtained by Mrs Skinner for May to October 2006 and May to October 2007 show a slight increase.

In 2006 there were 1,212 call-outs, but this year over the same period there were 1,280.

But the annual figure shows a decrease. In 2006/07 there were 2,362 call-outs compared to 2,821 the previous year.

Jean Fooks, executive member for a cleaner city, said: "Residents don't need to use the Freedom of Information Act to get these figures, they just have to ask for them.

"We have always been very open about the number of call-outs and we do want people to report incidents so we can deal with them.

"The total number of call-outs does fluctuate from time to time, but the trend overall shows a decrease.

"We have been very responsive to call-outs and are asking Thames Water to do as much baiting of the sewers in the city as they can."

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Jock, Headington says...
7:44pm Wed 21 Nov 07

Seems to me that with the wet summer one might well expect an increase in the number of rats living above ground if their sewers were more prone to flooding. There are all sorts of possible reasons for it. But people will always use such figures to reinforce their pet gripe if it fits. Ms Skinner and her fellow campaigners need to direct their ire at the folk who have proved unable for whatever reason to adjust their life styles to the new agenda of lowering waste and increasing recycling. The success of the recycling revolution in Oxford is clear. If there are pockets with problems it's certainly no reason to go back on the wider beneficial changes that the majority of the city has coped with admirably.

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con man cam, oxford says...
9:58pm Wed 21 Nov 07

Have people forgotten that Jericho was where the Boat people lived with all their cats and terriers were probably keeping the vermin population down and why no mention of the Thames Water bandits decision not to bait sewers which has increased the population,
plus the fact that Jericho households are predominately middle class or multi occupancy households of students one of which is using the house as a second home and the second pays no Council Tax I wold like to see the landlords of the multiple occupancy homes charged as commercial premises if they produce as much rubbish as a shop they should pay
Those employed by the University should use the undoubted power of that august body to pressure the Water company to resume proper vermin control

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annie, east oxford says...
11:25pm Wed 21 Nov 07

Jock if you examine the information it shows that the rat population has generally increased across the city not just in pockets. Besides the point is that we have consistently been told that the rat population has decreased not increased and this is clearly not the case as the official council statistics show. They are pretty basic figures and have not been manipulated in any way. Incidentally we had the rats before the floods and the bad weather.

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Jan, says...
10:35am Thu 22 Nov 07

If there are pockets with problems it's certainly no reason to go back on the wider beneficial changes that the majority of the city has coped with admirably.


"Beneficial changes"? This is the biggest step backwards in terms of public health protection. With government bodies (WRAP)now advising weekly food waste collections, the Campaigners across the country can be proud of their achievements. Good recycling rates are not dependent upon less frequent general waste collections - 50%+ RECYCLING RATES ARE BEING ACHIEVED BY COUNCILS OPERATING WEEKLY COLLECTIONS.

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Jock, Headington says...
11:04am Thu 22 Nov 07

I don't see the figures saying that at all...

What they do say is that there has been a five per cent increase in one half of the year and a fifteen plus percent decline in the whole year. Given that most of the new recycling system was rolled out by mid-March one would have expected a significant increase in both parts of the year if it is true that fortnightly collections directly causes an increase in rats.

And frankly, given that people have been bleating on about this throughout the year, it doesn't actually surprise me that later in the 12 months under consideration more people would report rats because they'd have been made more aware that they can and get something done about it.

What has turned into a personal, vicious campaign against Jean Fooks as an individual is disgraceful and beneath some of the people who have been engaging in it. Those people better than most know that the fundamentals of the scheme were designed cross-party and before Jean was even responsible as portfolio holder - because some of them were objecting even when it was just on the drawing board.

Instead of this bickering, it would be better if we started looking now at how to move further towards a zero waste society, which will involve significant changes in our throw-away lifestyles. The best comment I've seen on this was a letter in the Oxford Mail from a lady I think in Littlemore commenting that over her way people can't afford to throw away so much food and so they don't see so many rats feasting on their left-overs!

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annie, east oxford says...
11:46am Thu 22 Nov 07

Jock I am confused by what you say - surely the most up to date figures are the ones to go by - you yourself said that:
"But people will always use such figures to reinforce their pet gripe if it fits." You can't have it both ways.
As to people being more aware of rats well it is difficult to avoid them when they are running around outside your kitchen and/or in the garden when you are sitting in it. I don't think it is necessarily that people are more aware of it. Totally agree with you about reviewing our waste not a problem. But I would suggest that in a city that is densly populated, has a high level of HMOs and a transient population this system is inappropriate. this has been said by government ministers and I believe Paul Bettison from the Local Govt Assoc said similar. And the Govt Select Ctte on Waste has said that more research on the health effects needs to be carried out. The introduction of AWCs are extremely unpopular. An on-line Oxford Mail poll found 79.4% wanted weekly collections.

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Ian, Oxford says...
3:04pm Thu 22 Nov 07

oh my god.. Wildlife actually outside your house.. shocking! The world is over what are we going to do?? !! Seriously,!! There have always been rats and there will always be rats especially in ageing housing stock, it’s when they get inside when you should do something about it, even then it’s not really an issue!

I also wonder how many people have gone to hospital for being ill because of new collections sytems???.. mmm i'm thinking none.. this isn't even an issue just middle upper middle class snobbery who struggle to cut down there waste because they don’t want to change their throw away life styles!!

oh and 79.4% of the post readers probably don't understand why we changed collection systems in the first place and are basing their opinions on convenience rather than anything else…

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annie, east oxford says...
3:36pm Thu 22 Nov 07

What an extraordinary comment to make. I was under the impression that rats were the carriers of some pretty serious diseases that can be transmitted by a variety of ways including their excrement. And I don't think that I want them in my house nor near children!

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Jan, says...
4:06pm Thu 22 Nov 07

Well said, Annie, and thank you for taking this issue seriously. You are correct that rats do carry serious diseases - especially Weil's disease transmitted to humans through rats' urine. This can prove fatal. Their presence in any town/city should not be ignored.

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Ian, Oxford says...
5:08pm Thu 22 Nov 07

"Rats are frequently blamed for damaging food supplies and other goods. Their reputation has carried into common parlance: in the English language, "rat" is an insult and "to rat on someone" is to betray them by denouncing to the authorities a crime or misdeed they committed. While modern wild rats can carry Leptospirosis and some other "zoonotic" conditions (those which can be transferred across species, to humans, for example), these conditions are in fact rarely found. Wild rats living in good environments are typically healthy and robust animals. Wild rats living in cities may suffer from poor diets and internal parasites and mites, but do not generally spread disease to humans."

quote - Wikipedia

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Roger, East Oxford says...
6:08pm Thu 22 Nov 07

Ian, Leptospirosis IS Weil's disease, and people don't want it. Many of us remember being strongly advised not to swim in the Cherwell because of the risk of it.

Despite your evident enthusiasm for rats, people don't want them either, infectious or not. I don't think this is even controversial.

A lot of people rather like foxes, though. I have a weakness for them myself. It is nice to have wildlife like birds and foxes and hedgehogs and bats in the garden, but not rats.

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Jan, says...
7:11pm Thu 22 Nov 07

From Oxford City Council website:

Are rats hazardous to humans? Yes. Rats are a serious hazard to public health. Aside from contaminating food with their droppings and urine, fleas from rats were responsible for spreading the bubonic plague. Today, such diseases as salmonella bacteria (food poisoning), leptospira ( jaundice), and typhus are commonly spread by rats. Because of their unsanitary habits, secondary infections from rat bites can be serious and sometimes fatal. An infestation of rats must not be tolerated. When are rats most common? Rats are year-round pests. Under certain conditions, rats can survive outdoors during the winter, however activity and indoor migration increases as weather gets cooler and outdoor food and water sources decrease. When am I most likely to see rats? Rats are most active during the evening and remain so until the middle of the night. If food and water are scarce, or in the case of large infestations, rats become active during daylight hours. Where do rats build nests? Rats nest in any safe location near food and water. Outdoors, rats burrow into the ground. Indoors, nesting occurs in double walls, between ceilings and floors, in closed-in areas around worktops, and anywhere rubbish is allowed to accumulate. What are their breeding habits? Do rats multiply quickly? The average life span of a rat is 18 months. Young are born about 22 days after mating and mature rapidly. Single females may have as many as 6 litters per year, averaging 6 to 14 young each. By 3 months of age, the young are independent and capable of reproduction. If not controlled, an infestation of rats will rapidly increase.

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John, says...
7:12pm Thu 22 Nov 07

It is clear that there are more rats now than there were. Nobody wants more rats. The fact that there is more food for rats arising from AWC is obvious. The move to AWC will not reduce the numbers of rats but can only cause them to incrase. All these factors are real. The council (and privatised utilities are responsible for public health. We live in the fourth most wealthy country in the world and in a city which claims the second best university in the world - our waste collection system is equivalent to a third world country. We need to recycle but listen to evidence on waste collection and the increase in rat population and change back to weekly or as the world gets warmer twice weekly collections.

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Jock, Headington says...
2:53am Fri 23 Nov 07

So let's see, even if you think that one extra call out per thousand households is statistically signifcant, and especially given a year in which this story has been paraded across not just local but national media endlessly, almost certainly giving rise to more call outs by people who previously thought if they saw a rat there wasn't much could be done about it because we all know that we are never more than six feet from one of the little blighters, we're talking about a five per cent increase in the six months after the system was implemented and a 20% fall in the six months during which most of it was rolled out and people were getting used to it (and with a mild winter where the rats would be foraging in the open most of the time).

Personally, I reckon charging is the way forward, and with it opening up the system to competition. This is the twenty first century as someone said. It is an entirely different situation from when we had open sewers and no bins and people just chucked their organic waste out of the window into the street - hyperbole about the biggest step backwards in public health since Victorian times is just outrageous nnsense. The biggest step backwards is our throwaway society - this is a problem of affluence and those of us who manage not to throw away piles of food, or cannot afford to, should not be subsidising those who do and can.

What you bring home from the shops, in my opinion, is your responsibility, including the disposal of it. The problem with a monopoly provider of a service is that they're never going to be able to satisfy everyone without disproportionate increases in costs.

Councils should focus, in my opinion, on enforcing against people who do not make their own provision for disposal for anti-social behaviour. Competition would widen the options available. Some neighbourhoods might club together to compost organic waste. Supermarkets might provide facilities for waste collection when they deliver to peoples' homes. More households might install waste disposal units so they can put their food waste into the real sewer system ground up as commercial food outlets are supposed to do and all that nutrient be collected in the sewage treatment plants.

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john, east oxford says...
8:43am Fri 23 Nov 07

fewer people are reporting rat sighting as they are buying their own poison. Ask any retailer - they are now selling rat poison in tescos on cowley road presumably because everyone needs it.
Collection of waste is a sign of a civilised society. We need ts done appropriately and frequently. The smell, filth and garbage in east oxford is a disgrace and we need weekly collection to make reduce it.
I addition the schems is wasteful and ill thouht out - why when we have less collected we still need two trucks going round everywhere every week is beyond me; why we cannot have more neighbourhood recycling is also beyond me - we need a complete re-think and get this sorted out.

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Eric, Oxford says...
10:57am Fri 23 Nov 07

In the past years our council, like others, did very little to promote recycling. When they were faced with the problem they decided that they only way forward was to force people to recycle by introducing this ludicrous scheme as they neither had the vision or foresight to look at other areas in the world where recycling schemes have been introduced without creating a health hazard. It was obvious that fortnightly collections would never work in a city with such a high transient community, HMO's and the type of housing in the city. Some of us live in typical Victorian houses with no front gardens and small back gardens to store our waste. A few their rubbish in wheelie bins which has to be emptied every fortnight for transport through the house for collection. Others leave the bags in their back garden open to the air as they cannot stand the smell of the rubbish after it has been left to putrefy for two weeks in a bin. Of course, which ever method is used the problem is not on the streets but in the back gardens where the refuse is attractive to vermin. If the council ever manage to clear up the disgusting mess on our streets the problem will only be transferred to the back gardens which will no doubt please the council as it will be out of sight and out of mind. Of course the national media will show Oxford as a perfect example where such a scheme is unworkable.

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Jock, Headington says...
9:34pm Sat 24 Nov 07

Collection of waste is a sign of a civilised society.


No, appropriate disposal of waste might be. But there are many ways to achieve that. ON the public side there's support for splitting yet more waste out - by collecting food waste, but not other residuals, more frequently - this gets even more recycling up as food waste does not need to go to landfill. What an individual could do is a. not waste so much food, and b. grind it in in-sink waste disposal units for flushing down the drain (as food outlets are supposed to do as far as I am aware).

The bluster about returning to weekly residual collections is just that - bluster. There are many ways to skin a cat but I don't see why everyone should have to pay for those who cannot reduce their profligacy.

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Roger Moreton, East Oxford says...
9:34pm Sun 25 Nov 07

"I don't see why everyone should have to pay for those who cannot reduce their profligacy."

Or conjure up a bigger front garden, or reduce the number of people living in their house.

I don't see why I should have to pay for the greater cost of dustmen visiting widely spaced out houses in the less central areas. Such people should pay more for their water, sewerage, gas, postal, electricity and telephone services too, as well as their roads. All these are costing more than average, at the expense of the rest of us. Bus fares to these places are unreasonably low compared to shorter journeys, too. I could go on.

The normally accepted civilised policy in the 20th century was that everyone should have reasonable services according to their needs. It's a long time since I heard childless people complaining about the cost of educating other people's children.

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nicky F1, oxford says...
7:02pm Mon 26 Nov 07

France has a weekly bin collection service and they recycle more than us so i think we can probably learn something from that, and it is cheaper than AWC as well.

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Chris Sankey, Reading says...
9:57am Thu 13 Dec 07

As Jock of Headington and some others posting to this site dont seem to worried about rats I suggest they and any others who are interested make a close examination of their loft spaces/fibreglass insulation and anu garden shed or garage that is rarely used.Oh and if you can the cavity wall closures. 50% of those who do this will be unpleasantly suprised. especially those in terrace and connected properties.

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Annie Skinner with the list of city council rat call-outs she obtained Annie Skinner with the list of city council rat call-outs she obtained

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