Shipley and Bingley have been named by pest controllers as rat infestation hotspots following an explosion of the vermin population across the Bradford district.

The rodents are becoming bolder – going into people’s homes and running along roads in the daylight.

They are feeding on food waste dumped on streets and in the district’s sewer system.

Many have become used to living near humans over the past five years and are drawn to heavily-populated areas by the amount of food thrown away.

Bradford-based Yorkshire Water has maps showing hotspots of rats – which carry diseases and wreck property – in the region’s sewers.

And the hotspots are in highly-populated and reasonably affluent areas such as Shipley and Bingley.

“More and more people are throwing rubbish away and that is why there is such a lot of rats about,” said Tony Huddlestone, Yorkshire Water’s contracts manager for rat catching in the county’s sewer network. “It is a culture of ours that we throw rubbish on the floor instead of in bins, so that rats now, instead of living down in the sewers, are having their ‘caviar’ up on the surface.

“There are more rats on the surface area in the last five years than there has ever been.”

The vermin carry diseases such as Weils disease, which causes sickness, fever, headaches and diahorrea in humans.

They also gnaw through wood, concrete, metal pipes and cables, and get into cavity walls, causing millions of pounds worth of damage to homes each year.

A delegation from the Libyan Government yesterday visited Bradford district to find out about Yorkshire Water’s rat baiting operation in a bid to combat their own country’s vermin problems.

Pest controllers have attempted to manage the rat population by dropping poisoned wheat pellets down 100,000 manhole covers leading to sewers across Yorkshire. If the food is still there when the pest controllers return after a week, there is deemed to be no rat problem.

However, where poison-laced bait has been taken, Yorkshire Water updates its maps to show there are rats in the area and pest controllers continue baiting.

Under the scheme, poisoned bait has been taken from nearly 200 manholes in Shipley and Bingley in the past 13 months.

Rob Degaris, a pest controller for Rentokil, said: “If we didn’t do this there would be more damage to people’s homes and more rats in the street. The latest figures show there are 70 million rats in the UK. In Bradford there is definitely an increase in certain areas where there is a lot of terraced housing and food outlets. They will adapt to any conditions – we have even found droppings in children’s bedrooms.”