Updated 1 August 2025

Rats are a fact of city life and we all have a part to play in minimising their presence, indoors and out.

This page has information about prevention, rat boxes/traps and where to find out more. We also have a case study of how local residents successfully dealt with an infestation.

Prevention

As ever, prevention is better than cure: don’t feed the problem!

• Be careful with your food waste – the more rats eat, the more they breed
• If the on-street food waste bin is full, don’t leave food waste beside it
• Be careful with birdseed as rats will eat that too, so try to avoid seed spilling onto the ground
• Keep your bin areas clean
• Keep lids on bins
• Ask the Council to replace damaged bins
• Avoid giving rats shelter under plastic sheeting etc lying about in your garden – you want to make it easier for cats and foxes to predate on the rats
• Use rat wire at the bottom of basement doors to stop rats getting in
• Try to block up any holes in your basement other than air ventilation holes, and if the holes are large use rat wire across them (in general rats, unlike mice, don’t tend to climb much)

The British Pest Control Association has sensible guidance on how to prevent rats.

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Rat boxes

It is essential to protect children, pets or wildlife from coming into contact with rat poison or traps.

The only legal way to put rat poison or traps down in a public/shared outside area is to put it in a box specially designed for that purpose. These boxes are locked and have a hole for the rat to go in which is too small for a cat or dog.

The rat poison is in cubes with a hole in the centre which a wire is threaded through. This means the only way for the rat to bring out the poison in the secure box is by eating it, so the wire stops the rat dragging the poison out into the open. In general, rats tend to go back to their nests to die.

You can buy the boxes from DIY stores or online.

Even if you see just one rat, this is most likely evidence of a colony. It’s important to treat that local specific colony until all are gone. This means continuing to use poison and/or traps for a while after you think the last rat has gone, in case there are others.

The location of the rat boxes is very important to their effectiveness. Try to position them along the edge of walls and structures as that’s where rats tend to move – they don’t tend to run out in the open.

Find out more

You can find out more about rat control at the British Pest Control Association and Glasgow City Council.

Please help keep our neighbourhood safe!

Case study

The problem

A tenement block off Wilton Street had a problem with rats earlier in 2025. In situations where flats are privately owned it is the owners’ responsibility to tackle the problem, in conjunction with the Council.

In this case residents contacted the Council, whose pest control officers identified a broken drain under one of the closes which was a direct route from the sewers to the backcourt, and the rats were feeding in the bin store.

The solution

Residents held a meeting and decided to stop putting food waste into the bins and to use instead the on-street grey food waste bins which have lids. They also fitted bungs on the drainage holes of the large bins in the bin store. The rats were getting into the bins through these holes. The residents bought rodent mesh and blocked all the holes they could see and fitted metal plates along the bottom of the bin-store gates so that rats could not get in.

A pest control company was engaged to set baited traps which were emptied over a three-week period. The factor for the close with the broken drain got it fixed. These combined actions brought the problem under control.

The cost

The total cost for the 60 flats was around £1000, but split among 60 was less then £17 per flat. The residents of the close with the broken drain had to pay £350 per flat to the factor for the repair.

The £1000 came from the residents’ association funds. The association has been in existence since 1975 and there is an annual fee paid by each flat. The fee is decided at the AGM and is collected by the factor for each close and remitted to the association bank account.

There is more information about residents’ associations on our back lanes page.

Always look on the bright side

The good news is that rats can be controlled by joint action, and working jointly developed a good spirit of neighbourliness among the residents of the block.