Revealed: London NHS hospital trust spent £130k on pest control in a year

New figures: An FOI request revealed thousands of pests including cockroaches and rats have been found in NHS hospitals
PA
Hatty Collier30 December 2016

A London NHS hospital trust spent more than £130,000 on pest control in a year, new figures have revealed.

Spending at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust almost doubled over a five year period – by far the highest of those in the UK which responded to a Freedom of Information request.

The cost of dealing with pests at the trust increased from £64,425 in 2011/12 to £132,210 in 2015/16, according to the figures.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London also had one of the highest rates of spending for pest control, although this decreased from £61,488 in 2011/12 to £59,851 in 2015/16.

North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust spent £7,000 in each period over the five years, the lowest of the London hospital trusts that responded to the FOI request.

Rats and cockroaches were among thousands of pests found in NHS hospitals across the UK, it was revealed.

The data showed that there were nearly 5,000 pest control call-outs by NHS trusts to hospitals in England in 2015/16 – equivalent to around 13 a day.

Pests were sighted in maternity wards, children's intensive care units and operating theatres.

The amount of money hospitals spent on treating pests reached nearly £1.1 million in the year to March 2016 and the overall figure is likely to be far higher as 87 of around 150 trusts responded to the request.

Some refused to say how much they had spent, citing private finance initiative (PFI) deals or that the information was "commercially sensitive".

And costs have soared compared with five years ago, based on an analysis of the like-for-like data from the 62 trusts that provided figures for both 2011/12 and 2015/16, which showed a rise of more than 26 per cent over the period from £646,857 to £815,855.

The majority of trusts outsourced their pest-control to private contractors such as Rentokil, ISS Facility Services and Medirest and paid for regular inspections as well as ad hoc call-outs to pest sightings.

A spokesman from Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust said: "We take all pest control matters very seriously and deal with them swiftly.

"As a large provider of health services in London, the importance of high standards of cleanliness means a robust approach to incidents and prevention is absolutely essential."

A total of 4,885 call-outs were made in the last year to March, while like-for-like figures from 57 trusts showed there were 3,880 call-outs in 2015/16, a rise of 3 per cent on 2011/12.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Hospitals must have an effective pest control policy and the use of experts is good practice to ensure that buildings are kept clean and safe for patients."

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