Squirrels near you

The Invasive Alien Species (Enforcement and Permitting) Order 2019 creates a set of offences around invasive alien species, and article 3(2) is the one that bites here: releasing or allowing to escape into the wild any specimen of the animals listed for that purpose. Schedule 2 Part 1 sets out the animals to which the article 3(2) offence applies, and the grey squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, is on it, alongside the Chinese mitten crab, the red swamp, signal and spiny-cheek crayfish, the muntjac deer, the ruddy duck and the Egyptian goose.

The consequence runs against instinct. Catching an animal alive feels like the humane route, and for many species it is, but here taking a live grey squirrel away from your loft and releasing it into woodland is the thing the law prohibits. The same Order also covers activities such as keeping, breeding, transport and sale of listed species through its other offences and its permitting regime, which is why 'we will take it away and let it go' is not an answer a contractor should be giving.

So the practical question to a contractor is a direct one: what will you do with a squirrel you catch? The acceptable answers involve humane despatch on site under the welfare rules that apply to any animal under a person's control, not relocation. A firm that promises relocation either does not know the law or is telling you what you want to hear, and either is a reason to ask someone else.

Section 8 of the Pests Act 1954 makes it an offence, for the purpose of killing or taking animals, to use or knowingly permit the use of any spring trap other than an approved trap, and an approved trap is one of a type and make specified by order. The section applies to England and Wales but not to Scotland, which runs its own approval orders. Since a 2019 amendment, an order under the section may not specify a leghold trap as approved.

The specifying orders are the detail that matters on site. In England the Spring Traps Approval (England) Order 2018 revoked and replaced the 2012 order and lists the approved types, and it has been added to by variation orders in 2021 and 2023. The approvals are conditional as well as specific: a trap approved for use with grey squirrels may carry conditions such as being fitted with baffles supplied by the manufacturer or made to the manufacturer's instructions, and used in accordance with those instructions.

For a homeowner, the point is not to memorise the list but to know that it exists. A trap used for the wrong animal, or without the conditions attached to its approval, is outside the approval and therefore outside the law, regardless of how effective it is. Ask which trap is being used, whether it is approved for grey squirrels in your country, and how the conditions on that approval are being met.

A squirrel job has two halves, and the second is the one that determines whether it was worth doing. The first half is clearing the animals currently in the roof, which is done with traps set where the runs are, checked as often as the law and welfare require, over a short and supervised period. The second half is proofing, which means finding and permanently closing every route in — and that is roof repair work rather than pest work.

Timing matters in a way it does not with most pests, because a drey with dependent young in it changes the situation entirely. Sealing a roof with young inside produces dead animals in a wall or ceiling void, an unpleasant smell for weeks, and a mother squirrel doing fresh damage trying to get back in. A contractor should be establishing whether young are present before anything is closed, and should be prepared to say so if the work has to wait.

Proofing detail is what separates a lasting repair from a recurring call-out. Squirrels reopen weak points, so mesh and metal flashing at vulnerable corners outlast timber and filler; soffit and fascia repairs need to be sound rather than cosmetic; and overhanging branches and thick climbers that give access to the roof should be dealt with at the same time — subject, of course, to checking that nothing is nesting in them, since the nesting-bird offence applies to the tree as much as to the roof.

Squirrel quotations split between the trapping programme and the roof work, and the roof work is usually the larger figure. What moves it is how many entry points there are and how high and awkward they are to reach, whether scaffolding or a tower is needed, how much soffit, fascia or tiling has to be repaired rather than simply meshed, how many visits the trapping programme runs to and how often traps must be checked, whether the work has to wait for dependent young, and whether tree and climber work near the roof is included in the price.

LokalMatch is the introduction and nothing more. You describe the situation once with your postcode — what you are hearing, when you hear it, and what you have seen at the roof line — and firms working in your area get in touch with you. Homeowners are charged nothing to use LokalMatch, and the pros pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not do the work, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone who replies, so asking each firm how they will deal with a trapped squirrel, and whether proofing is in the quotation, is on you.