Pest control and bird proofing in Ashton-under-Lyne.

Market Square redevelopment and the traders around it

Ashton’s outdoor market dates back to the medieval period, and early in 2025 its square became a building site. The fixed stalls and kiosks were cleared for a single large canopy with ten kiosks, and stall traders moved to temporary pitches on Fletcher Square and Market Street while foundations went in.

Groundworks on that scale can break into old drains, voids and burrows. Rats displaced from under a long-established site look for new harbourage, and the nearest food businesses are the obvious target. Premises that back onto the works should have door seals, pipe entries and drain covers checked, with monitoring in place before droppings appear.

Temporary trading adds its own risks. Stock kept in vans, crates stacked at ground level and waste held overnight all give mice and rats something to exploit. A short written check of each pitch, repeated on a fixed schedule, gives a trader something concrete to show an inspector.

What do new food units in a Grade II market hall need?

The council’s plans for the Victorian Indoor Market Hall, reported in September 2025, would add food and drink units along the Bow Street wall and across a flexible seating zone, served by new roof plant and two extract ducts. A fit-out is the easiest moment to design pests out: sealed service penetrations, cleanable joints between floor and wall, mesh over vents and no hollow boxing behind counters where cockroaches and mice can settle.

Food hygiene law requires every food business operator to have adequate procedures in place to control pests. In practice, the officer scoring you under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme will usually want to see where the monitors sit, what each visit found and what was done about it. Our food premises pest control provides a site plan, a visit report and a log of corrective actions that slot into a HACCP or Safer Food, Better Business pack.

Why do Ashton’s listed buildings need careful bird proofing?

Several protected buildings stand in the town centre. St Michael and All Angels’ Church is listed Grade I, the former municipal baths on Henry Square are Grade II*, the market hall is Grade II and adds to the conservation area, and the oldest parts of the Town Hall date from its opening in 1840. Ledges, window reveals and parapets on buildings of this age make good perches, and the fouling beneath them stains masonry and makes entrances slippery.

Bird control and proofing on buildings like these starts with a survey and a method matched to the fabric, with fixings kept in mortar rather than stone and out of sight from the street wherever possible. Alterations that affect the character of a listed building can need listed building consent, so our written method flags where the owner should speak to the planning authority first.

Feral pigeons and gulls are wild birds, protected like all others under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Nests in use or being built generally cannot be disturbed unless a general or individual licence covers the circumstances, which is why we lead with exclusion, timed around nesting where the building allows.

Shopping centres, offices and St Petersfield

The town-centre retail core takes in Ashton Arcades, opened in 1995, the Ladysmith Shopping Centre and IKEA’s first town-centre store, opened in 2006. Shopping centres usually share service corridors, risers and bin compounds, so trouble in one tenant’s back-of-house rarely stays put. Our commercial pest control handles multi-tenant buildings on a single site plan across the shared areas, with each unit’s findings logged separately.

St Petersfield is office territory. Its redevelopment created around 280,000 sq ft of office space and about 2,000 jobs, and a Mayoral Development Zone set up in 2024 aims to improve local infrastructure and build new business units. On Henry Square, the restored Old Baths were fitted out for digital and creative businesses.

In offices the usual complaints are mice in ceiling and floor voids, flies around kitchenettes and the odd summer wasp nest. Employers must keep workplaces clean under the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, and logged visits help show that the duty is being met.

Three canals, a river and a railway on one edge

The Ashton Canal, the River Tame and the Stockport to Stalybridge railway together form the town’s southern boundary, and the Ashton, Peak Forest and Huddersfield Narrow canals meet at Portland Basin, where the towpath stays open and leads towards central Manchester. Linear features like these work as corridors for brown rats, which swim well and use banks, culverts and embankments for cover.

Sites near the basin and along that southern edge are more likely to face steady pressure from outside than isolated incidents. Our rat and mouse control here starts with proofing: drain caps, brush strips, sealed cable and pipe runs. Tamper-resistant stations go along perimeters, and any rodenticide is used in line with the CRRU code rather than left down indefinitely.

Check Tameside Council’s website for current pest control services and charges. Drains are a common way into buildings, so a drain survey belongs in any plan for persistent activity.

Ashton Moss and the proposed innovation park

West of the town lies Ashton Moss, a 260-acre peat bog. A 2023 proposal set out an innovation park there, either side of the M60 off Lord Sheldon Way, for digital and health manufacturing and engineering. Peat, drainage and ground conditions were still to be resolved, most of the western plot would need to come out of the Green Belt, and an ecology park featured in every layout.

If the scheme goes ahead, units beside open moss and new habitat will have rodents and birds close by from the start. Proofing written into the specification, perimeter monitoring from handover and deterrents on canopies and loading bays are far easier to deliver than a retrofit.

Landlords and housing providers

Ashton grew on cotton, and workers’ housing was built at Park Bridge, on the Oldham border, as early as the 1820s. Where homes share party walls and roof spaces, mice move from one to the next, so treating a single property in isolation rarely holds.

Jigsaw Homes has its head office in the town and keeps a contractor for significant infestations of pests such as rats, mice and bed bugs in its own homes, along with communal bin stores and roof spaces. Private landlords usually carry that responsibility themselves. Pests are one of the hazards assessed under the HHSRS, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 lets tenants take action where a home is unfit, and section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 means disrepair to the structure and exterior that lets pests in usually falls to the landlord. Our pest control for landlords comes with a dated report you can file and share with an agent or tenant.

Pest problems at home

Tameside moved its black and blue recycling bins to three-weekly collections in January 2022, and unrinsed cans and bottles left that long can draw wasps in late summer, so rinse them and keep lids shut. Autumn brings mice indoors, and grey squirrels will use any gap at the eaves to reach a loft. Jigsaw tenants with ants, moths or flying insects, which the association leaves to residents, can book us directly. Our domestic pest control starts with a survey that tells you which pest it is and what needs sealing.