Start With a Message, Not a Can of Spray
If you rent, the first useful step is to tell the landlord or letting agent. Do it in writing, with the date, the room and what you have seen: a line of ants from the back door to the bin, ants round the kitchen window, ants coming up between the floor tiles. A short video of the trail helps more than a long description.
Hold off on the shop spray while you wait. It kills the ants it lands on and scatters the rest, which makes the trail harder to follow back to the nest when someone comes to deal with it. Wiping the trail with washing-up liquid and water is fine; it removes the scent the ants follow and does no harm to a later treatment.
The one thing that avoids arguments later: a dated, written report sent as soon as the ants appear. It costs nothing and it answers the question of when the problem started before anybody has to ask it.
Who Normally Deals With It
We are pest controllers, not legal advisers, and there is no single rule. Who pays usually comes down to the tenancy agreement and to the cause. Ants nesting under the patio or in the base of an outside wall and finding their way in through a gap at the threshold are a feature of the building. Ants marching to an open jar of jam are, at least partly, a feature of how the kitchen is kept.
- Landlord or agent: commonly books and pays for the treatment, and sorts out gaps and failed seals that let ants in.
- Tenant: reports it quickly, keeps sweet food sealed, and gives access on the day agreed.
- Freeholder or management company: in a block, the grounds, paths and communal areas where the nest often sits are usually theirs rather than any one flat’s.
- Everyone: leaves treated areas alone for as long as they are told.
Landlords wanting the wider picture can read the advice centre page on pest control for landlords. Shared student houses, where food left out by several people is the usual driver, have their own page for Earley.
Flats Have Their Own Wrinkle
Reading has a great many flats, and in a flat the nest is rarely inside your front door. It is more often under the paving by the entrance, in a planted border against the building, or in the fabric of a ground-floor wall. The ants you see on a second-floor worktop may have climbed a long way through service ducts and pipe runs to get there.
That matters for who books. Treating the inside of one flat does little if the colony is under a communal path, so where the nest is on shared ground the managing agent needs to be involved. We are happy to speak to them directly and to invoice whoever is actually paying.
Booking and the Visit
Ant control is a fixed £240, confirmed before anything is booked. What the treatment involves at your address is explained at that point, so the landlord and the tenant both know what to expect. Tell us who the occupier is and whose number to use for access, so nobody is waiting on a message sent to the wrong phone.
On the day, the work is a gel bait placed in cracks and out of reach indoors, a residual insecticide at the nest, entry points and outside wall bases, or both. Whoever lives there needs to know where it has gone. Children and pets stay off treated areas until they are dry and for as long as you are told, and the booking is the moment to mention children, pets, fish tanks or anyone vulnerable in the home.
What the Occupier Does Afterwards
Ants often stay busy for a few days as foragers pick up bait and carry it home. That is expected. The occupier’s part is to not mop over treated skirting, not spray the bait, and not leave an easier meal on the side. Rinse recycling, keep the bin lidded and put pet food down only at mealtimes.