Geoff Rogers, senior pest control officer for Shropshire Council, tackles rats on his rounds

Residents in Shropshire made nearly 5,000 requests to environmental health chiefs to deal with pest control incidents in the past year, new figures have revealed.

The majority of the calls made to Shropshire Council were for the treatment of wasps’ nests followed by rat problems, a report to councillors says. There were also calls for help with pollution and fair trading fears.

The figures collected by the authority’s public protection department show there was a total of 4,841 service requests made between April 2009 and the beginning of March this year concerning pest control.

The category for the second highest number of requests to the department was pollution, followed by fair trading and commercial.

A service update to councillors from Andy Goldsmith, assistant director for public protection, says: “The largest proportion of fair trading service requests were around car sales and home improvements and pollution service requests were predominantly complaints of nuisance from noise, sewage and odours.

“One of the functions of the service is to undertake inspections and interventions of business premises to check for compliance with legislation to protect health, safety and fair trading.

“Inspections are planned at the beginning of the year on a risk-based approach with premises that pose a higher risk due to activity or weaker management receiving more frequent visits than those rated as posing a lower risk.”

Shropshire Council brought together environmental health, licensing and trading standards into a new service called public protection following the move to a unitary authority last year.

Mr Goldsmith said that with a shake-up of local government it was feared performance could have been hindered by the changes.

But he said the hard work of staff within the service had ensured that results were on a par with those achieved before the move to a unitary council. His report says: “Regulatory services received over 11,000 service requests in the first three quarters of 2009/10.”

By Russell Roberts