Living Next Door to a Building Site in Colindale
Most pest problems start with something that has been in place for years: an old drain, a draughty loft, a garden shed. Colindale is different because so much of it is brand new and so much more is under construction. The blocks are modern, but the ground around them keeps changing, and a flat that was quiet when you moved in can be sitting beside cleared land or an open excavation a few months later.
What demolition and groundworks disturb
Older buildings come with older things underneath them: drain runs, sewer connections, voids and rough ground that rats may have been living in for a long time. When those buildings are knocked down and the ground is dug out, the animals using them lose their shelter and their food at the same moment. They move to the nearest cover they can find, and on a regeneration site that is usually the finished phase next door, with its bin stores, planted beds and ground-floor flats.
Laying foundations and new drainage can also leave old sewer connections open for a while until they are capped or replaced. Not every site causes a problem, and the timing is hard to predict, but a rise in rat activity nearby when clearance or digging begins is a pattern worth knowing about. Mice are displaced in the same way, in smaller numbers and over shorter distances.
Moving in while the block is still settling
A new block fills up over months, not days. While flats sit empty there is nobody to notice droppings in a kitchen or a gnawed packet, and mice that get in through a gap left by one of the trades can settle before most of the residents have arrived. Boxing around pipes, the space behind kitchen plinths and service cupboards that were closed up in a hurry are the usual hiding places.
Moving in brings its own risks. Removal boxes that have been in storage, second-hand furniture bought to fill a new flat and deliveries left in corridors can all carry pests into a building where nobody has had a problem before. A new block is clean, but it is not sealed against what its residents bring through the door.
Who to tell, and what to report
If you think a building site is the source, report what you have seen to the site's contractor or developer as well as your managing agent, with dates and photos if you can. Activity in bin stores, car parks and communal corridors is normally for the managing agent to arrange. Inside your own flat it is usually down to you as the leaseholder, or to your landlord if you rent. Several households reporting the same thing at the same time gets far more attention than one.
Small steps that help beside a site
- Keep bin store doors shut and put rubbish in the bins, not beside them, while work is going on nearby
- Do not leave food, bird seed or pet bowls out on ground-floor terraces and balconies
- Look along kitchen kickboards and inside the cupboard under the sink every few weeks
- Report a gap around a pipe or a damaged air vent in a communal area rather than waiting for someone else to
- Unpack stored boxes and check second-hand furniture before carrying them up to the flat
When the digging stops
Activity usually settles once a phase is finished and the ground is covered over again, but the rats or mice that moved across in the meantime do not always leave by themselves. If signs carry on after the site next door has gone quiet, it is time to deal with what is now living in your building, and then to close the gaps they used to get in.
