Forum spotlight: Dealing with rats

Our members-only forum is the ideal place to share experiences with other landlords and seek advice.

In our forum spotlight this month, we look at a recent question a landlord posted on our forum in relation to responsibility for dealing with a rat issue at the garden of their rental home.

The situation

The landlord posted on our forum this month explaining they had received an email from a tenant who had spotted a rat in the garden of the property. The tenant had also reported a rat inside the rental home, as dog accessories had been chewed and some dog food - kept in a cupboard - had been eaten.

The landlord had visited the property and identified a hole close to a drain outside, which they assume was giving the rats access to the property. They took to our forum to ask what they needed to do, as the landlord, and who would be responsible for dealing with the issue.

The responses on our forum

The first member to comment on the thread said the first thing our landlord needed to do was to block any holes that could be causing the rats to get into the property.

After doing this, it could also be a good idea to advise the tenant to keep the dog food in pest free containers in the cupboard, so the rats could not get to it easily.

The next forum user to respond to this question agreed, but also advised our landlords to call in a professional such as pest control to urgently to look into the issue.

They said that in their view, if pest control found that inadequate maintenance or bad design of the building was the cause of the pest issue, it would up to the landlord to sort it out. Regardless of this, this forum user said it was in the landlords’ interests to try to help the tenant to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Then, an adviser from our expert advice team joined in on the thread.

They agreed with the other landlords, that if the rats had found their way into the property, the first thing the landlord must do is to resolve the issue with the hole near the drain they had spotted.

Meanwhile, the landlord should also contact pest control to establish if there are any rats inside the property.

Our adviser also said it would be a good idea to remind the tenant about storing the food correctly, and to keep food away from ground level as much as possible.

The landlord could also consider contributing to replace items reportedly damaged as a result of the problem with the rats, but they wouldn’t have to.