Express & Star

Free service scratched as Cannock residents will have to pay for removal of bedbugs, cockroaches and fleas

Residents will soon need to pay to have bedbugs, cockroaches and fleas removed after councillors voted to introduce charges.

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Currently the services are free but Mitie Pest Control, which has carried out the service on behalf of Cannock Chase District Council since 2014, has pulled out of its contract early.

Cannock Chase District Council hopes the contract will be extended until the end of year. It was due to run until March.

The authority is legally bound by law to provide a service to catch rats and mice and that will still continue free of charge into 2017.

Cabinet member for the environment, Councillor John Preece, told councillors at a meeting on Wednesday that Cannock Chase would be only one of two district councils providing free rat and mice capture in Staffordshire. The other is Staffordshire Moorlands District Council.

Councillor Preece told the Express & Star that he wanted a free rat and mice pest control service to remain so people were not plagued with problems of other people's making.

He said: "If it's bedbugs you know the person calling us out for the service is the source of the bedbugs but with rats and mice they can travel distances.

"If you have got rats and mice in your garden the cause is not necessarily anything you have done that's the problem. With rats and mice if people just leave them, then it's a problem. I don't think charging people would help."

Green Party councillor Paul Woodhead said he wanted 'the most vulnerable' residents in Cannock Chase protected once the charges were brought in.

There were five bids to carry out the council's work tendered by a deadline on October 24. Prices will be settled when a new pest control company has been chosen, which should start work on January 1, 2017. The new charges will start on that day .

The council had already charged for the removal of wasp nets and will now charge for the removal of the other pests.

In a report seen by councillors at a meeting on Wednesday, the council's head of environmental health, said: "The likelihood of engaging a new contractor to deliver the contract on the current basis at the same or a lower price is negligible.

"It is considered that an increase in funding to maintain the same level of service or a reduction in the range of free services on offer would be required if funding is not increased."

Mr Woodhead added: "In principle I don't have a problem other than when you have got people who cannot afford them.

"I think there should be some kind of means-testing, so that if people are on benefits or struggling then we provide the service for them."

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