Pest Controlin LeighGreater Manchester

How did three old townships shape Leigh’s housing?

Leigh began as three townships, Pennington, Westleigh and Bedford, which were joined into one town in 1875. Each survives as a suburb, and old Pennington took in most of what is now the town centre. Around that centre the housing is largely Victorian and Edwardian terraces packed close together, and the town is still mainly residential, with about 53,000 people on the 2011 estimate.

Terraces of that age share more than a front wall. Party walls, roof spaces that run along the row and drain runs serving several houses mean a mouse problem in one home rarely stays there. Typical ways in are a gap behind kitchen units, a loose collar around an old waste pipe or a void under a suspended timber floor. So our rat and mouse control on these streets starts with a survey of where the runs go, including next door where the neighbours agree, rather than a few bait boxes behind the fridge.

The post-war town looks different. Work on the large Higher Folds council estate started in 1952 under Leigh Borough Council, with facilities planned for a population of 7,000, and newer housing has since gone up on the old Bickershaw Colliery canal side and close to Atherleigh Way. On estates and new builds, mice tend to get in at ground level through airbricks, service entries and gaps around garage doors, while rats dig in under sheds and decking. Whether a household on an estate can use the council’s pest service depends entirely on whether it rents from Wigan Council, which is covered further down.

What do two canals at Leigh Bridge mean for rats?

Leigh has two canals, not one. The Bridgewater Canal and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal’s Leigh Branch both cross the town from west to east and meet at Leigh Bridge, just south of the centre, with the Bridgewater passing through Pennington on that south side. Wherever a bank, towpath edge or back garden meets the water, brown rats find what they need: a drink, cover and soft ground to burrow into.

Two of the town’s newer commercial sites sit on the canals. The Loom, which opened in 2011 on the Bridgewater’s north bank, brought a seven-screen cinema and a large supermarket, and Leigh Sports Village lies on the south bank of the Leigh arm. Food waste from cinemas, cafés and supermarkets will draw rodents moving along a waterway, so a sealed bin store, closed service doors and well-fitted bristle strips matter as much as anything we put down. A householder whose garden backs onto the canal faces the same pressure on a smaller scale, and compost bins, bird feeders and gaps under decking are where we look first.

Brooks, mossland and a lake left by the pits

Away from the canals, Leigh is low and wet. Westleigh Brook runs north to south across Westleigh and Pennington Brook runs west to east through Pennington. Both meet other streams in Bedford, where together they become the Glaze Brook and flow on to the Mersey. To the south-east lies Chat Moss. Its surviving fragments at Astley and Bedford Mosses sit barely 50 feet above sea level and are protected as part of the Manchester Mosses Special Area of Conservation.

The largest stretch of water is a legacy of coal. Pennington Flash, between Leigh and Lowton, formed early in the twentieth century as subsidence, mainly from Bickershaw Colliery, flooded the land, and two farms were abandoned. Its lake now covers about 70 hectares inside a country park of around 200 hectares run by Wigan Council, and more than 230 bird species have been recorded on the reserve.

Wet ground and open land like this support rats and mice around the edges of the town. As autumn turns cold, house mice and wood mice look for shelter indoors, and homes beside open ground or brook banks tend to notice first. Near water and protected habitat we work with trapping, proofing and tamper-resistant bait stations placed with care, and we do not scatter rodenticide where it could reach wildlife or a watercourse.

Can Wigan Council treat pests in your Leigh home?

Only if you rent that home from the council. Wigan Council’s booking page says it no longer offers pest control to homeowners, private tenants or private landlords, and that bookings from them will be cancelled. Council tenants book online with a rent or tenancy reference and show proof of tenancy at the appointment. For them the service covers insects and vermin, with preparation guidance for bed bugs and wasps named in its terms, and the council links to a separate list of pests it does not treat. The page carries no date, so it is worth checking before you book.

That leaves most Leigh households, and every business, needing a private firm. Landlords of privately let terraces should build pest treatment into how they manage a property, and tenants should report a problem to the landlord or agent as soon as they spot it. Bed bug control in particular works better when tenant, landlord and technician agree preparation and follow-up visits at the start, because a single treatment rarely reaches eggs that hatch afterwards. Wigan’s general waste bins are also emptied every three weeks, which makes careful storage of food waste part of keeping rats away from the back door.

Markets, retail parks and the sports village

Retail is the backbone of Leigh’s economy. The traditional centre has indoor and outdoor markets every day, the Spinning Gate Centre has around thirty units, and a short walk from the shops a retail park now stands where Parsonage Colliery once was. Leigh Sports Village opened at the end of 2008, with an official opening the following May, and gathers a stadium holding 12,000, with hospitality suites and corporate boxes, beside an indoor sports centre and 25-metre pool, a college campus, a hotel, a supermarket and a pub.

Each of those uses brings its own risk. Market stalls and food outlets contend with mice and stored-product insects; a hotel needs a discreet, well-recorded response to any bed bug report; the wide roofs over retail units and stands can give feral pigeons and gulls places to nest. Our commercial pest control for sites like these runs on scheduled visits, written reports and a bait plan that an environmental health officer or auditor can follow.

Bird proofing, whether netting, spikes or wire, is planned around the building and the law. All wild birds are protected, and only certain species may be controlled under general licences. With eight hides and more than 230 recorded species at Pennington Flash, most of the birds around Leigh are nobody’s problem, so our work is aimed only at the pigeons or gulls fouling a particular roof or canopy.

How do we schedule Leigh visits from Warrington?

We reach Leigh by road from our Warrington base. The A580 East Lancashire Road crosses Bedford south of the Bridgewater Canal, and the A579 Atherleigh Way serves Leigh Sports Village. Grouping visits by area means a homeowner in Westleigh and a manager at a retail unit both get an agreed day, with the follow-up date set at the first appointment. The same planning covers nearby Culcheth and Wigan, so a business with premises in more than one of these towns can keep them on one visit schedule.