Terraces built over old drainage
East Ham, West Ham and Plaistow are built up with close-packed Victorian terraces sitting on drainage that has been carrying the area's streets for well over a century. A cracked pipe or a shifted joint under one of these terraces gives a rat a way up from the sewer into a floor void, and the tell-tale sign is activity indoors with nothing visible outside: scratching under the boards, a smell near the stairs, droppings behind a kickboard.
Dockland conversions and new blocks near the water
Around Canning Town, converted former dockland buildings sit alongside newer riverside developments, and both share the sort of communal bin stores and service ducts that let a rat move between flats without ever crossing open ground. Stratford's regenerated blocks near the former Olympic Park are built to modern standards, but bins, deliveries and landscaping around a busy town centre can still draw rats close to the building even where the fabric itself is sound.
Manor Park's terraces and the railway line
The terraced streets and multi-let houses around Manor Park sit close to both the cemetery and the railway, and embankments and disused ground either side of the tracks give rats cover to travel unnoticed before turning up in a nearby garden or yard. Where a house is split into several flats, one household finding signs is worth mentioning to the others before assuming the problem stops at your own door.
Getting rid of them: the order that works
- Work out whether it really is rats and not mice - the droppings and the gnaw marks differ
- Stop putting food out: bird feed, unsecured bin bags, pet bowls left outside overnight
- Arrange treatment rather than scattering poison where a child, pet or fox could reach it
- Leave any hole you've found alone for now, in case a rat is still using it
- Once activity stops, shut the route for good: proofing above ground, a repair below it
Keeping them out once they've gone
In Newham's Victorian terraces that usually means gaps where pipework passes through party walls and damaged airbricks, both easy for a rat to widen with its teeth. In the borough's multi-let and converted housing, worn thresholds and gaps around shared meter boxes are just as common, and proofing needs to cover the block's communal areas as well as your own front door.
Booking rat control in Newham
Rat control anywhere in Newham is £190 for a flat and £240 for a house, and because around Stratford, where the regenerated town centre and surrounding streets, mentioning that when you book rat control points us towards the likely route in, with the rest of the detail on the Newham rat control page.
