Government badger control costs 2020
Updated 16 October 2024
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1. Background
On 7 September 2020, Defra published, as part of its measured approach to tackling bovine TB and achieving disease control benefits, Natural England’s authorisations to local farmers and landowners to carry out targeted badger control in the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Avon, Shropshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire.
Operations took place between 1 September and 3 November 2020.
2. Badger control costs
Information on costs to government in 2014 to 2020 is provided in Table 1 below.
| Badger control costs | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing and compliance monitoring | £1,036,000 | £1,003,000 | £1,284,000 | £1,289,000 | £1,312,000 | £1,459,000 | £1,541,000 |
| Humaneness monitoring, including post mortems | £1,515,000 | £154,000 | £392,000 | £506,000 | £352,000 | £388,000 | £282,000 |
| Efficacy monitoring | £17,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Advice and assessments | £294,000 | £460,000 | £646,000 | £728,000 | £410,000 | £314,000 | £313,000 |
| Other costs, including equipment | £205,000 | £162,000 | £53,000 | £49,000 | £1,000 | £20,000 | £16,000 |
| Total cost | £3,067,000 | £1,779,000 | £2,375,000 | £2,572,000 | £2,075,000 | £2,181,000 | £2,152,000 |
For information and data on badger control monitoring in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Avon, Shropshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire in 2020 see Bovine TB: summary of badger control monitoring during 2020.
3. Badger control policing costs funded by Defra
The total cost for policing in 2020 across all participating forces was of £4,071,000.
Policing costs are also published by individual forces.