Pest control and bird proofing in Longsight.

Food businesses around Stockport Road and Dickenson Road

Longsight’s main shopping area sits near the corner of Stockport Road and Dickenson Road, where a library and supermarkets trade alongside many smaller shops. The district is known for its Pakistani takeaways and restaurants and for greengrocers stocking a wide range of fresh fruit and vegetables, so much of the commercial pest risk here sits in kitchens, dry stores, produce displays and the yards and bins behind them.

For an operator, pest control is a food-law question. Regulation (EC) 852/2004, which still applies in England, requires adequate procedures to control pests. Under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, an Environmental Health Officer scores “confidence in management” partly on paperwork: a site plan with numbered monitoring points, recent visit reports, the products used and evidence that recommendations were acted on. A thin file can pull a rating down even when no droppings are found.

Our food premises pest control visits are built around that file. Each report is written so it can go to an inspector, or into a HACCP or Safer Food, Better Business pack, without rewriting.

Upstairs matters as much as the shop floor. Census 2021 counted 67 Longsight households in flats inside commercial buildings, such as over a shop. Those homes can share pipe runs and ceiling voids with the business below, so German cockroaches behind a ground-floor oven can reach the flat above. We inspect both where we can get access, because treating one without the other usually means a return visit.

Why does Longsight Market need its own routine?

Longsight Market on Dickenson Road, recognisable by its brightly coloured profiled roofs, holds a general market on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and a second-hand market on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A site that fills with food and packaging on some days and empties on others suits rodents, which can feed during trading and move about undisturbed in between.

Responsibility is split, too. Traders answer for their own stalls and stock, while drains, waste areas and the building fabric often sit with the operator. Our monitoring follows that line, so shared problems are logged separately and reach the party who can fix them.

Rail depots, building sites and culverted brooks

Much of Longsight’s rodent pressure comes from land residents rarely see. Longsight Electric TMD, first built in 1842, is one of the largest train depots in the UK, with room for 179 carriages and Avanti West Coast Pendolinos stabled overnight beside Northern, CrossCountry and TransPennine Express stock. Manchester International Depot, built in the early 1990s for Regional Eurostar services that never ran, reopened in January 2023 to service and stable Northern’s Class 323 trains. Together they make a large area of sidings and depot buildings in the middle of the neighbourhood, with the quiet cover rats favour.

Building work adds to it. A former spice factory on Stockport Road was demolished for a 96-home scheme for the housing association One Manchester, and a previously underused brownfield plot on Levenshulme Road now holds 37 social-rent homes, completed at the end of October 2025. Groundworks can break into burrows and old drain runs and push rodents towards the nearest yards and bin stores. The Crowcroft and Levenshulme Road brooks feed the Gore Brook, which runs in and out of culverts on its way to the Mersey, and culverted watercourses can give rats damp, sheltered routes.

On commercial and rail-side sites our rodent control uses tamper-resistant stations, trapping where it suits the site, and rodenticide only where CRRU stewardship guidance supports it. Every point is mapped and logged for the facilities manager or auditor. Proofing entry points carries as much weight as baiting, particularly in autumn, when rats look for shelter indoors.

Bird proofing on listed churches and historic buildings

Three Longsight churches are Grade II listed: St John’s, St Agnes’ and St Joseph’s. Slade Hall, an Elizabethan manor house on Slade Lane, is Grade II*, and on Daisy Bank Road Edgar Wood’s First Church of Christ, Scientist, now the Edgar Wood Centre, is Grade I.

Towers, gables, carved stone and deep window reveals give feral pigeons places to roost and nest. Works that affect the character of a listed building can need listed building consent, and churches of some denominations go through their own approval system instead. We fix into mortar joints rather than stone where we can and favour netting or low-profile wire that can later be removed.

Wild birds, their eggs and nests in use are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. General licences in England allow limited action against certain species for reasons such as public health, but only where non-lethal methods such as proofing or deterrence are ineffective or impractical. Our bird control work is timed around active nests. The same approach applies to large venues such as the National Speedway Stadium and the National Basketball Performance Centre at Belle Vue, which sit inside the Longsight ward.

Landlords in a ward where most households rent

For private landlords, the duties sit in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, including the section 11 repairing obligation, and in the fitness duty added by the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which draws on the HHSRS hazards, one of which covers domestic hygiene, pests and refuse. In most cases an infestation that gets in through disrepair, such as a broken airbrick or gaps around pipework, falls to the landlord. Our pest control for landlords includes a written report on entry points and proofing, which is useful evidence if responsibility is disputed.

Shared housing needs a whole-building approach. Census 2021 counted 175 Longsight households in converted or shared houses, including bedsits, and Victoria Park next door mixes University of Manchester halls with rented homes. Bed bugs travel in luggage and second-hand furniture, so treating a single room of a shared house seldom holds. Our bed bug treatment covers connected rooms and common areas together.

What does Manchester City Council offer?

Many councils run a pest control service for residents, but what is covered, who can book and the charges all vary and can change, so check the council’s own pest control pages before you book. If you rent from a council or housing association, report the problem to your landlord first. If you would rather book a private firm, phone or use the enquiry form and we will arrange a survey.

Homes: terraces, semis and Westpoint villas

Domestic pests in Longsight follow its housing. Semi-detached houses are narrowly the most common type in the ward, just ahead of red-brick terraces, and just over one home in eight is a purpose-built flat. Mice move along the shared roof spaces and under-floor voids of terraces, so the house that gets treated is often not the one where the problem began.

In the leafy western streets known informally as Westpoint, and among the Victorian villas overlooking Crowcroft Park, larger roofs, chimneys and gardens can mean rodents in wall voids, wasp nests under the eaves in late summer and pigeons on chimney stacks. Our domestic pest control gives these homes the same survey and written follow-up as a commercial site.