Based on 34,776 pest control call-outs with a valid postcode district, booked in the 12 months to October 2026. Real jobs, real postcodes: this is where Britain actually calls pest control.
As featured in the Evening Standard. Our bed bug call-out figures also informed “London’s biggest bed bug hotspots revealed as capital dominates UK call-outs league table” (Evening Standard, 5 October 2026), reporting London’s lead in the UK bed bug call-out table.
As featured in The Times. This dataset informed “Why we’ve seen fewer wasps this summer - but more rats, mice and ants” (The Times, 7 August 2026), which reported our rising rat and mouse call-outs alongside a fall in wasp jobs over that summer.
As featured in The Argus. Our rat call-out figures also informed “Brighton and Hove named among UK’s biggest rat hotspots” (The Argus, 13 August 2026), reporting BN1-BN3’s place near the top of the national rat table.
As featured in Birmingham Live. Our rat call-out figures also informed “Birmingham is UK hotspot for rats - and one postcode had a 950% jump in call-outs” (Birmingham Live, 16 August 2026), reporting Birmingham’s place at the top of the national rat table.
Most pest maps are built on surveys or search trends. This one is built on 34,776 genuine call-outs booked with our group over the last 12 months, mapped to postcode district. The headlines: wasps have edged ahead as Britain’s busiest pest over the 12 months (8,456 call-outs), peaking in rural Bedfordshire and Northern Ireland; rats run them close and are everywhere (8,076); bed bugs are overwhelmingly a London story (4,942); and mice split their time between the capital and Birmingham (4,525).
Wasps & Hornets: 8,456 call-outs
The wasp map is the mirror image of the bed bug map: rural and suburban, not urban. North Bedfordshire villages (MK45, MK44, MK43) top the district table, with Sandy (SG19) and Newtownards (BT23) next, while Northern Ireland - not shown on the map - is the single busiest area in the country with 573 call-outs across BT postcodes. See wasp nest removal.
Rats: 8,076 call-outs
Rats are everywhere, but the busiest districts cluster in Bedfordshire (MK45, MK43, MK40), Oxford (OX4, OX3, OX2) and Brighton and Hove (BN3, BN2, BN1) - while the Birmingham (B) postcode area logs 309 call-outs, more than any other. See our rat and rodent control service.
Bed Bugs: 4,942 call-outs
Bed bugs concentrate where people and property turn over fastest: London fills the top of the national table, led by Islington (N1), with Croydon (CR0), Whitechapel (E1), Poplar (E14) and Battersea (SW11) level behind it. We have mapped the capital district by district on our dedicated London bed bug hotspots page. For treatment, see bed bug removal and heat treatment.
Mice: 4,525 call-outs
Mice are a south London story above all: the SE and SW postcode areas lead the country, with Birmingham (B, 214 call-outs) the strongest area outside the capital. Forest Hill (SE23), Southwark (SE1) and Islington (N1) lead the district table. See mice control.
The rest of the table
Beyond the big four, the remaining 12 categories account for 8,777 call-outs: other wildlife (2,716, our catch-all for jobs not booked to a single named species), squirrels (1,268, led by Birmingham and Glasgow), ants (1,186, concentrated in north London - Hampstead’s NW3 is the single busiest district), birds (726), moths (630, remarkably concentrated in prime London: Chelsea’s SW3, Kensington’s W8 and Maida Vale’s W9 all make the top five), cockroaches (572, led by Derby and East Ham), flies (555), fleas (525), silverfish (174), foxes (154), beetles (140) and spiders (131). Together with the big four they make up the 34,776 total above. Dedicated hotspot pages for these are on the way.
Comparability. This page moved to a live extract of our job records in September 2026 and now counts only the 16 pest categories we publish. The headline total is therefore not directly comparable with the 39,204 shown on earlier versions of this page, which drew on a wider job set.
Use this map
Journalists, councils, schools and websites are welcome to embed our interactive pest hotspots map. Copy the code below into your page. It works on phones and desktops, and has no cookies or tracking inside it. The map updates each month with our latest figures.
Please credit "Data: JG Pest Control" with a link to this page. You can open the map full screen, or open it on a single pest and area by adding, for example, ?pest=Bed%20Bugs&focus=Greater%20London. Prefer to draw your own graphic? Download the data by postcode district (CSV). For anything else, see our press page.
Frequently asked questions
Every figure comes from real pest control call-outs booked with our group. In the 12 months to October 2026 we reviewed 51,759 jobs; 34,776 of them carried one of the 16 pest types we publish plus a valid postcode district, and those are the jobs counted here. Nothing is modelled or estimated.
Wasps and hornets narrowly top our 12-month call-out table with 8,456 jobs, just ahead of rats on 8,076, with bed bugs on 4,942 and mice on 4,525. Wasp work is heavily seasonal, so the order between the top two can change from month to month.
Rural Bedfordshire. The villages of MK45, MK44 and MK43 are Britain’s busiest wasp districts in our data, and Northern Ireland’s BT postcodes log more wasp call-outs than any other area - 573 in 12 months.
Monthly. Each page shows the 12-month window its figures cover and the date it was last refreshed, so you always know how fresh the numbers are.