Government badger control costs 2023
Updated 16 October 2024
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1. Background
On 7 September 2023, Natural England authorised licence holders to resume operations in 29 existing intensive badger control areas. Natural England did not issue any new intensive cull licences in 2023.
2. Badger control costs
Information on costs to government in 2014 to 2023 is provided in Table 1 below.
| Badger control costs | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | £1,542,000 | £1,520,000 | £1,200,000 |
| GPS and Humaneness monitoring, including post mortems | £1,515,000 | £154,000 | £392,000 | £506,000 | £352,000 | £388,000 | £282,000 | £254,000 | £643,000 | £296,000 |
| Efficacy monitoring | £17,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Advice and assessments | £294,000 | £460,000 | £646,000 | £728,000 | £410,000 | £314,000 | £313,000 | £88,000 | £143,000 | £59,000 |
| Other costs, including equipment | £205,000 | £162,000 | £53,000 | £49,000 | £1,000 | £20,000 | £16,000 | £3,000 | £1,000 | £1,000 |
| Total cost | £3,067,000 | £1,779,000 | £2,375,000 | £2,572,000 | £2,075,000 | £2,181,000 | £2,152,000 | £1,887,000 | £2,307,000 | £1,556,000 |
3. Badger control policing costs funded by Defra
The total cost for policing in 2023 across all participating forces was £2,587,000.
Policing costs are also published by individual forces.