Total council pest control visits have risen across Scotland from 2020/21 to 2021/2022.  

A series of freedom of information requests by the Herald have revealed which critters are the biggest focus of each council's vermin services.  

Overall between July 2020 and June 2021, local authorities facilitated 36,995 pest control, but in the following 12 months, that figure rose to 45,918 - mainly due to an increase in wasp-related callouts. 

Orkney and the Western Isles councils do not provide pest control visits, while East Lothian council was the only authority to not respond to the request for information. 

 

While rats and mice declined slightly in 2021/2022 across the board, council callouts for wasps nearly doubled from 5,685 to 10,628. 


READ MORE ON SCOTLAND'S PEST CONTROL


 

When the figures are broken down into local authorities - Fife, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire had the highest rate of pest control visits per 100,000 people in the more recent months. 

 

Based on types of vermin, Fife Council dealt with more mice callouts in both twelve-month periods, while North Lanarkshire facilitated more pest control visits for rats in 2021/22. 

View the breakdown of the figures for each local authority by hovering over the information in the following table. Glasgow City Council said it was unable to break down its figures into types of vermin. 

Of the councils which broke down the callouts into totals for rats, the most treatments for rats from July 2021 to June 2022 were seen in North Lanarkshire with 3657 visits, Fife with 2278 and South Lanarkshire with 1117.

Based on cumulative totals of visits for both rats and mice, only eight out of 28 councils saw numbers of visits rise from 2020/21 to 2021/22 – North Lanarkshire (64.69% rise), East Ayrshire (1.30%), Aberdeen City (36.11%), South Ayrshire (52.25%), Stirling (500%), Midlothian (55.10%), Perth and Kinross (28.95%) and Aberdeenshire, which went from no pest control visits to two visits for rats.  

If you are interested in a closer look at the pest control visit numbers for both rats and mice, the following chart shows figures for each council.

Of the 21 local authorities which broke down their pest control visits to include data on wasps nesting within and outside homes, only one council, South Ayrshire, saw the figures decline in the twelve months up to the end of June 2022.   

A total of eleven of those councils had seen the number of pest control visits needed for wasps at least double. 

The biggest spike in visits was in South Lanarkshire where there were 760 wasp-related pest control visits in 2020/2021 but 1685 in 2021/2022.  

Finally, if you would like to see the total figures - hover over the council area you are interested in in the map below.