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 Albert Painter points to a manhole cover used to gain entry to the sewers
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Bring back the ratcatchers plea
OLD-FASHIONED ratcatchers should be brought back to deal with the escalating rat problem in the borough, according to a former sewer engineer.
Albert Painter, 78, from Palgrave House in Fleet Road, spoke out after his neighbour Julie Gonsal – wife of former Town Hall chief engineer, Dugald Gonsal – found a live rat foraging in her kitchen bin on Sunday.
A New Journal investigation last month revealed rats were running freely around the Fleet Road estate – with some described by tenants as clustering around holes “like meerkats”.
Mr Painter, who worked for Hampstead Borough Council in the 1960s and then for the Town Hall said: “The rats are getting bolder everywhere. If you don’t go down the sewers regularly and monitor them, they will keep coming up and looking for food.
“We used to have men going down the sewers twice a year to bait them. Our department looked after all the surface drains and sewers, we inspected the system for faults and defect.
“But since privatisation, no one is taking responsibility for the sewers – it is getting caught between Thames Water and the council. The routine surveys and maintenance don’t seem to get done anymore. I don’t see anyone going down the sewers to check on the problem.”
He added: “What’s made it worse are all the fast food outlets. People are eating food on the streets and throwing away their leftovers on the grounds. They need to be educated about the facts.”
Mrs Gonsal, who has lived in the area with her husband for the last 30 years, said the rat problem had escalated in the last year.
She added: “I am really angry that I could find a rat in my kitchen bin, in my own home. I have never experienced anything like that before. I don’t want it to happen again.”
A spokesman for Thames Water said: “The drains in Fleet Road are on a council-owned estate and therefore not part of the public sewer system for which we are responsible – so this particular issue falls under the remit of Camden Council.”
A Town Hall spokesman admitted responsibility for the drains on the estate, but added: “We have baited on the estate four times this year. The problem has been traced to a blocked drain and a sub-contractor will be inspecting it tomorrow. When the drain is cleared it will be baited and this should solve the rat problem.
“The rats do move from the sewers under the roads that are the responsibility of Thames Water and maybe they could assist us by dealing with their end of the pipes. " |
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