How Are Grey Squirrels Removed From Loft Spaces in Buckden? – Price and Problem Guide

People expect the first visit to be about putting equipment in a loft. It is mostly about establishing facts, because getting any of them wrong makes the rest of the job either useless or actively harmful.

One: What Is Actually Up There

A roof space can hold a squirrel, a rat, mice, nesting birds or bats, and the evidence overlaps enough that it is worth confirming rather than assuming. Two of those possibilities are legally protected, and where they are present no control work happens at all.

That is not caution for its own sake. Bat droppings crumble to a dry glittery powder rather than squashing, collect in a pile beneath one point, and come with no gnawing anywhere — and if that is what we find, we will tell you and stop.

Two: Whether Control Is Warranted At All

BPCA's own guidance is that a pest professional should assess whether lethal control is necessary. Applied honestly, that rules out a good proportion of squirrel enquiries — a squirrel in a garden, on a fence or on a bird feeder is not a pest control problem, and we would rather say so than take the booking.

Inside a roof space it usually is warranted, because of what the animal does to the building once it is there.

Three: Whether There Are Young

BPCA's guidance is two litters a year, in early spring and summer. For a good part of the year an adult using a roof space may not be the only animal in it, and establishing that changes the order the job is done in and what happens to the opening.

Four: How It Is Getting In

The roofline, and the route on to the roof — branches, ivy, fences, drainpipes, adjoining structures. This is what the proofing will address at the end, and it is much easier to survey before anybody has disturbed anything.

Five: What Has Been Damaged

• Cable, which is the urgent one. BPCA list stripping insulation from electrical wires among the damage
• Insulation, torn up and gathered
• Timber and ceilings
• The cold water tank, and whether it has a proper lid
• Stored possessions

Then, and Only Then

The programme is set out: what will be done, how many visits it is likely to take, what the proofing will involve afterwards, and what it all costs. You get that before anything is booked, and there is no call-out fee.

Where the honest answer is that this is a roofing job, or that the noise is not a squirrel, or that there is nothing up there at all, that is what you will be told.