A family were left devastated after returning from holiday to find their £400,000 luxury home burnt to the ground – after squirrels chewed through wires in the loft.

The rodents sparked a huge blaze which destroyed the roof, first floor and much of the ground floor of the semi-detached property in Cuffley, Hertfordshire.

Six fire crews battle the flames but the three-bed dormer bungalow could not be saved.

Updated article from the ntpa:

Update 24 June 2010

Congratulations ……
It was very uplifting that so many NPTA members took on board the plea, that appeared in the April ’NPTA News’, to write to MEPs to show support against the EU proposal to ban anti-coagulants.

As well as the tremendous amount of support from members, the NPTA also wrote to all the MEPs and the media. The NPTA has worked exceedingly hard on your behalf and has attended meetings, conducted interviews for television, newspapers and radio stations and has pushed to make the relevant bodies aware of the proposal and get all those parties on board to help fight the proposal.

The good news is that the ENVI committee accepted the amendment from Christa Klass which means that anti-coagulants will be allowed to be sold and used for all the usual purposes. Well done to everyone who contacted their MEPs!

However, they also accepted an amendment which will mean that difenacoum can only be used in tamper-resistant boxes and by professional pest controllers. This amendment may well be changed before the regulations come into force because there is no common definition of professional users in the EU. In some countries it will include farmers but in other countries it may exclude them. This will make it impossible to enforce with any consistency.

This restriction will probably also apply to other active ingredients in due course if it is not changed.

A new regulation coming before the European Parliament’s Environment Committee on 26-28 April threatens to remove all anticoagulant rodenticides from the market across the EU from 2013, preventing effective rat and mouse control in most situations.

Clearly this would seriously increase risk to both public and animal health as well as raising particular dangers for the safety and quality of food not to mention the adverse impact on our environmental quality.

The anticoagulant rodenticides currently supported under the EU Biocidal Products Directive are the essential foundation of rat and mouse control throughout Europe, accounting for an estimated 95% of current EU rodenticide use.

Despite wide acceptance of the vital role anticoagulant rodenticides play in protecting human and animal health and the environment, the proposed text (Article 5.1) of the EU Commission’s proposed Biocidal Product Regulation, could prevent their inclusion as ‘active substances’ in the definitive Annex 1 List, completely prohibiting their future use.

This would be especially damaging given the fact that none of the very few available alternatives for Annex 1 inclusion provide anywhere near an equivalent level of control and all have significant practical or safety limitations to their use.

Under these circumstances, it is essential the proposed new regulations do not exclude anticoagulant rodenticides from continued EU use.

We would therefore ask you to write to your local MP and or your Member of the European Parliament, stating how important it is to retain the use of anticoagulants in rodent control as well as passing this message to all other stakeholders and influencers that you know.