Pest perspectives EP 21 - Paul Westgate - Veritas Pest Consultancy - Pest Perspectives

Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 21.

It's hard to believe I've got I've got to episode 21, but I

enjoy doing it. It's been such a hot day today

melting. Can you can you?

Can you hear my fan? Oh.

No, no, no. That's what it's over there.

It's not too bad. I can feel it, but I can't hear

it. But this week we have on Paul

Westgate, Veritas, Best Consultants.

They got it right. Got it.

Right I've. Been practising this.

Yeah, it does because I, I don't want to say it wrong, but but

yes, thanks for coming on. Do you want to give people a

brief, a brief of what you what, what you do in the industry

currently? We're going to go through it

all, but just a little brief 1. Yeah, so I managing director at

Veritas Pest Consultancy, an organisation that just helps

people to do pest control better.

Who people who want to improve their pest control.

We work with with individuals in the pest industry, we work with

food manufacturers, we work with organisations, anyone who wants

to review and improve of how they do things.

We coach people, we train people, we carry out field

biologist inspections, we do consultancy visits, we do all

kinds of bits and pieces. But the objective of our

organisation is to is to do pest control better, to push those

boundaries and make things more professional.

That's good to hear. Nice.

Has has Sean left me? Have I left Sean?

Sorry, everyone, I was talking. You were talking and then you

know how the paint it went blank and went reload.

So I don't actually know what happened there.

The internet's fine. Yeah, sorry about that.

No, it's me. I think I'm a tinx when it comes

to podcasts. I think.

I think when they got the podcasts I break it.

Bringing that beauties and beasties back when you're in

Germany. But yeah, but yeah, that's a

good, that's that's a good description.

So if we roll back, roll back when you first got into pest

management, how did you get into pest management?

Well. Yeah, so I did applied biology

at university back in the 90s with a steer towards working in

the crop protection industry. I started working with a company

called AstraZeneca as it was doing trials on new pesticides.

And it wasn't the dream that I thought it was going to be.

I was a young man and I decided to go travelling around the

world for a year, which I did. And I came back, landed back in,

in Brighton down where I live. And I needed some money.

And I saw an advert in the local paper for a pest control

technician and it said about, you know, putting pesticides

down and all that kind of stuff. And I thought, do you know what?

I've got my PA one, I've got my PA6.

I know about a bit about this kind of stuff.

I've always been interested in insects.

They've always been my, my passion in life.

And I thought, yeah, let's give this a go.

So I work for a company called Pester Kill for probably about a

year and suddenly realised I really enjoyed this this sector

of something I knew nothing about.

And I spoke to Dave Clements who was the owner at the time.

I said Dave, I want to become a field biologist and he rightly

told me that I needed more experience and I was young and

of course I knew better. And I, I applied for a job at

Renterkill at the time who were looking for a biologist in my

local area in Sussex. So I was taken on by by

Renterkill. I've worked for them for a

number of years before leaving Renterkill and moving across to

another, another pest control company called Rokill Pest

Control who I worked with for a number of years.

Very much enjoyed that, did various roles, filled

biologists, customer support, business development.

I think got a bit disillusioned with the industry and what went

before I left Renterkill, got disillusioned, went out and I

did some voluntary work in the Amazon rainforest looking at

frogs. Oh, not them dead.

Did you see any of them? Deadly ones?

They reckon they can kiss you any dead.

Ultimate yes, yes, wow, that's what we're about catching poison

dart frogs. Poison dart frogs and.

Brave man and all. Those kind of did you?

Have to wear like seriously protected gear in cake.

No you didn't. Oh wow.

We, we, we did take some sensible precautions, but yeah,

I was going out in the middle of the night in the rainforest

catching frogs and giving them to the scientists to sort of

catalogue in what frogs they were.

I travelled around a bit and then then I got my job with

Rokil. I worked for them for a number

of years before going back to Renterkil to manage the Tesco's

account for a little bit back to Rokil to manage Sainsbury's.

And then as these things do, Sainsbury's got re tended out to

Ecolab I think. And I was due to go with the

contract to work for Ecolab and decided that that wasn't for me

and set up a small pest control company very, very aptly named

Westgate Pest Control. I don't know where the name came

from, but I ran effectively Veritas Pest Consultancy and

Westgate Pest Control were kind of merged together.

I ran it with, with one of my best mates, Matt Hornsby,

excellent pest controller. And in about 2019, I think it

was just for COVID, we were sitting down having a beer

together and he just said, look, I think we should cash in our

chips, sell the business. And he wanted to buy a house,

get married, have another child, do all those kind of things.

And it, it felt right. Yeah, we sat down, you know, we,

we were, we were just two blokes that enjoy pest control and we

created a relatively large business.

I think there were nine of us by the time we sold.

So we sold our business to Rokil because we liked them, trusted

them, and that's really where Veritas was born from.

So I kept Veritas, I'm going, which I've done since 2019.

And yeah, that's kind of that's the journey thus far.

There's been a few other kind of deviations in there.

Obviously a BPCA executive board member for the last sort of 4-5

years when I head up one of it's called the Academic Working

Relation Group committee. So it's objective is to link

universities and pest controllers in a better way so

that we can get some more data in the industry for the benefit

of the industry because we're we're really poor with data.

I was involved with trying to trying to collect some data on

glue boards when, when the whole glue board thing came about,

finding, finding data on glue boards was, was challenging.

And it it really Hanford our ability to defend our toolbox.

So we've got some interesting collaborations with

universities. So we're putting questions to

university students to try and get them to answer some of the

questions we have in pest control with the, with the

ultimate aim to do something with behavioural resistance in

rodents and things like that. So it's quite, quite exciting.

Do lots of things in the UK, overseas, get involved in some

interesting stuff. I, I have a very unique

perspective on things because I work for very small companies

and I work for the biggest companies.

I work for pest controllers, I work for food manufacturers

directly. So I get to see quite a lot, do

a lot of training for the BPCA. So I do lots of their training

from yeah, entry level technician all the way up to

field biologist. I do some training for Basis.

So I work for Basis as well. So I'm a a store inspector for

Basis. So I go around the country,

Sussex, Kent, London, that kind of part of the world, doing

audits on Agri chemical stores to make sure they're safe.

And I do training courses for people storing agrochemicals in

that sort of things. And I do redempticide point of

sale audits. So making sure that people

selling professional use redempticide are selling it's

kind of to the right people and understand the rules and

regulations as to as to what that looks like.

So yeah, I get involved in a few bits these days, OK?

Do you ever walk up to like, say, you ever heard of the store

moles? Mole country store Yeah, have.

You ever walked up to the shop and just tried to buy some

identicide? What what to see if they they're

asking for certificate? Yeah, I on one of my last audits

last year. I can't get away with it so much

now because people know me, but I spied a new I spied a new

cashier at one of the desk and I thought I'm going to make this

easy on myself. So I pick up a great big bucket

and I plunk it on the desk. I say I want to buy that.

And the, the girl looks at me and she says that's a

professional use only products. So I'm going to need to see

some, some, some training certificates and I need you to

fill out one of these declaration forms.

And I said, I obviously explained at this point of who I

was and what I was doing and, and, and proudly announced, you

know, she'd asked the right questions.

She'd. Asked for my certificates.

She she got the form out and I said there's no need to do that.

I said I'm for basis and the poor girl, the look on her face,

she was terrified by this. I said no, no, no, please don't

worry. You've done an amazing thing.

You've done exactly. And I called the manager over.

I said, look, there's no rule that, yeah, obviously I had to

check through some of the stuff. But I said, look, the test has

been done. You have passed.

And this, this your colleague here has done amazing, at which

point she a big smile came over her face and she.

So I think, I think generally companies get it, You know, they

get it. Certainly the companies that are

being audited get it. These new changes are going to

cause some challenges. So they definitely are.

And yeah, we'll we'll have to wait and see how it goes because

there was a big fight when these challenge changes first came in

with the stores. So a lot of these people are

selling to farmers. They're selling to people who,

you know, might want to buy a few buckets because they've got

some stables or something like that.

Particularly in the farming community.

They, they went through this before.

They went through this whole kind of why have I got to do

this and, you know, all the rest of it.

And to go through it again for them might be quite challenging

and the fact that they can't buy off the back of their Red

Tractor Assurance anymore from next year will be huge, will be

huge. You know, I don't think people

realise that the work needs to be done now to get your points

added on, your points added on. Even as a trainer.

I'm learning more about actually you've got to take each each

three of the modules to get your 3 crew points.

It's not a case of, you know, run a 3 hour course on

environmental risk assessments and you've got your points.

You need to do the environmental risk assessment, you need to do

the Burrow baiting and you need to do the introduction one as

well. So it's going to be really,

really challenging, Really challenging.

Yeah, mate, if I cut off again, I'll come back on.

I'm not sure what's going on, but I will just come back in.

Just carry on talking, yes. Yeah.

I'm not sure. I don't know.

You said you were a jinx. Maybe something's happened.

I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. But yeah, I mean, from what I

understand, as of next year, you have to say you're buying of, I

don't know, Lodi or kill Germ. However, whoever you're with,

CPD, body basis, etcetera, once you've done your points, you'll

be able to download a certificate and send it to them.

That's what I've been told you do.

It is. And again, on your, on your, on

your CPD card for, for next year.

I'm, I'm with the understanding there'll be a little logo on

there because obviously you'll learn your CPD points up to the

end of this year and then you'll get a card for next year.

And that card will have a little crew logo on it to confirm

you've done the crew points as well.

Yeah, because it I'll be honest, it doesn't.

The rest of the other points, sadly it's a by bait.

It's only the three crew points that actually matter.

If you do 20 points and then not crew.

Yeah. After the partner certificate,

cannot buy ridenticide. Yeah.

So it's, it's going to be challenging.

You know, we, we, we need to do something because clearly we're

not achieving the objectives that we want to do.

Well, I think as an industry we are getting better, 100% better

than how I saw things sort of when I've been in the industry

for 2025 years and. Yeah, you've probably seen some

sites. I can guarantee and.

You know how we were trained. We were trained to open the

boxes top not with bait, move on to the next one.

As an industry, we were told the more baked boxes you sell to a

customer, the more money you'll earn.

You know, and that was us as an industry putting those things

out there. So you know, we are not wholly

responsible for redempticizing environment, but we still, I

still see quite a lot of bad practise.

You know, we are better 100% we're getting better, but are we

where we need to be? Definitely not, you know and I.

Would say. Though I would say, I mean with

all this, I would still say it's only my opinion just to be out

there that the amateur used products are also adding to the

problem as well. You won't stop it, but that is a

contributing factor as well. Undoubtedly, undoubtedly, but

you know, there's a difference between amateur and

professional, you know, and it's a professionals aren't getting

it right, then how can we expect the amateurs to?

So you know, I spent lots of time I, I see a massive cross

section of the pest control community and I often ask

questions to people. I say, OK, who's put rap bait

outside? And people put their hands up

and I said, OK, who's who's done an environmental risk

assessment. And people kind of look at me a

bit like, hang on, what's I'm not sure.

Have I done an environmental risk assessment?

Have have I documented that? And that's something that's a

requirement. It's a requirement you do in

ERA, if you put bait outside, you should assess the risk and

manage those. And I would say a large portion

of, of, of us as professional pest controllers and you know,

I'm a professional pest controller like everyone else.

We're not doing them. You know, as part of our, our

kind of safe use of redenticides, we should consider

the resistant status of the rats and mice that we are there to

treat. The number of people that I say,

I say, who knows the resistant status of the rats and mice in

their area. And people go, well, no, how

would I know that? And you point them in the

direction of the R, the RAC map and start explaining that.

And they suddenly go, you know, you could, I see people in

training courses and I see the moment that they go.

I've been using Bromadilac outside for the last 10 years.

And in my area, there's huge resistance issues.

And perhaps that's the reason that I'm not getting on top of

some of these things. Perhaps that's one of the

reasons that we're contributing as professionals to redent aside

the environment, we're, we're definitely better.

There's, there's no question that we're better.

But my, my question is if, if the people that are being paid

money are not doing the right things, then how can we expect

people who are amateurs to use the product responsibly?

So I think I would love to be able to stand up and say, you

know, it's everyone else's fault.

We're brilliant, we're professional pest controllers

and this is our standard. And, and sadly, as an industry,

we're doing great things. Let's, let's not forget we are

doing great things and we, we should be very proud and

positive of the changes we've made, But we shouldn't be

sitting here resting on our laurels thinking, oh, it's

everyone else's fault. It's amateurs, it's farmers,

it's gamekeepers, it's all of these people.

Because ultimately, you know, when we go to, I go to food

factories where, you know, there's 60 bait stations outside

all topped up with Brodifer Coombe and nothing's eating it

except for the snails. And we're taking money from a

customer. We're saying give me money for

us to poison the environment. And that, that that's there's,

there's work to be done. There's work to be done.

I would say as an industry with redempticide, external use, I

would say we are, we are AC Plus, if we go back to the old

school ways of doing it as an industry, I just think there's

so much more we can do. And to be more professional, you

know, to, to, to, to be separating the difference

between an amateur and a professional, there should be

miles between the two. And I'm desperately hard not to

use my favourite analogy at the moment, which involves a very

famous footballer. But I'm going to say it anyway

because I can't help myself. You know, if we look at

professional footballers, I use Cristiano Ronaldo.

And if you stood Cristiano Ronaldo next to me, you would

clearly see which one of us was the professional footballer.

And it's Cristiano Ronaldo. Despite the fact we have access

to the same football boots, we have the same access to the

same, you know, uniform, the same shin pads, the same

everything, but the outcomes are hugely different because he

hones his skill, he practises his skill, he does the right

thing, he has the right behaviours and the right, the

right, the right things to make him better at his craft, which

is football. And I just think as professional

pest controllers, I think there's some more we can do to

separate ourselves from amateurs.

And unfortunately, too often I, I walk into accounts, I walk

into, into, into places where, you know, we see things like,

yeah, we saw a mouse. I, I chucked 10 bait stations

down or I put a trap down. And it's, it's, it's, it's

trying to to get us to a point to elevate ourselves to above.

So there's clear gap between US and us and an amateur.

So you know where these food factors are, these places that

will actually are you talking more places that are audited as

in requirements? Yeah, I mean, I, I spend a lot

of time. My natural habitat is a, is a,

is a big food factory. That's where I spend a lot of

money. So if you were to suggest a

normal pest control, obviously perhaps this whole get it fixed,

they would do it. So that's pretty basic, that is.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's. They would pay for that because

there is, you obviously know there is businesses out there

that will not pay for that to be done.

That's quite annoying. And, you know, when I go and see

my doctor, he tells me to, you know, drink less beer and eat

less curries. Whether I do that or not is up

to, is up to me, isn't it? To some degree.

But he's going to continue to just say those things because

they're the right things to say. And I think as pest controllers,

we've, we've got to be making the right recommendations.

We've got to be giving the right advice.

We've got to be doing the right things and it's really up to us

to influence the customers to make sure that they that they.

Still with me? You've cloned yourself, Sean.

How have you done that? I don't know what's going on

tonight. It's me.

But but yeah, I think, you know, as I was saying, you know, we've

got to make the right, right recommendations.

Whether they do it or not is, is largely up to them.

We do have an influence on it and I, I strongly believe that,

you know, we as pest controllers need good people skills to be

able to influence our customers, to try and get them to see the

benefit of what we're doing. Try and educate.

It's not easy. No, it's a learning.

I'm learning. You got, you got to explain it

more from the value point and the point of what will happen if

you don't do X. Rather than saying you need to

get this whole filled, you need to explain what will happen more

because it's it because when you're in pest control, when

you're doing these courses, they don't teach you this stuff.

You've got to learn it. It's.

Not in the most courses to do the way you're taught to

customers, I mean, I mean the way you put it across to them,

that's what I mean. Not that you you shouldn't be

proofing or whatever. I just mean.

Yeah, I, I agree with you. And I think the biggest skill of

pest controller can have or must have is good people skills.

And quite often in some of the courses that I do, we go on to,

we go on to talk about customer service and how to manage

customers and those kind of things.

And I have, I have this kind of approach.

I, I like drawing a number six on the floor and getting someone

on the opposite side of the room to tell me what number they see.

And they'll often say they see a number six and I'll tell them

that they're wrong. I'll say you are wrong.

And from I'll say that's a nine. And we have a bit of a role

play. We have a bit of a discussion as

to say, well, hang on a minute. It, it really depends which way

you're looking at the number as to which number it is.

It's either A6 or it's a nine. And it's only until each person

has walked the whole way around the number that they can fully

appreciate that for one angle, it looks like a six.

From 1 angle, it looks like a nine.

And it's only then when we understand how our customers are

thinking and how we are thinking that we can propose the right,

the right solution to that. And I have, I have AI have a

really good example. I have a food factory that for

many years didn't do any of the recommendations.

So I'd write them big reports. I'd say you need to fill this

hole, close that up, all the rest of it.

And they never did it. And one day I plucked up the

courage to speak to the guy and I said, why?

Why aren't you doing the recommendations?

Why aren't you, why aren't you filling in all the holes in?

And the chap turned around to me and said, he said, look, you

give me these recommendations. I've got an engineering

department and they won't do it because it's beneath them.

They're here to fix machines. They're here to do those kind of

things. And I said to this chap, OK, OK,

I now understand. I've seen it from your point of

view as to why you weren't doing the recommendations.

And I said to him, would it be, would it be sensible if I got

someone in from the pest control team to fill those holes in?

And he said that would be amazing.

And from that day on, that food factory gets a list of all the

minor proofing, gets past the pest controller who comes in and

fixes all of that. And it was the reason we had

success there was because we started to look at the problem

from different people's perspectives.

And it wasn't a case if they didn't want to do them and they

couldn't afford to do them, there was a blockage.

And it was until that we walked around the six to see it from

different angles, to see that it could be a six to some people,

it could be a nine to others that we finally went, actually,

now we know what the problem looks like.

Let's come up with a solution. Doesn't work with every

customer. Some customers, you need

different approaches. But our skill set as pest

controllers should be, we should have customer service training.

I, I say to many people, I do customer service training for

some, some companies that bring me in, They want to know about

how to manage customers and that kind of thing.

And I think it's, it's part of that journey from being an

amateur to a professional. We should have customer service

skills. You know, I say to people who

come on my course, I say, has anyone got customer service

skills? Has anyone had customer service

training? And a few people put their hands

up and they say, yeah, I worked in a bank, I worked in a shop, I

worked in a Cafe. And the first thing they taught

us was customer service skills. Have you had any since you've

been a pest controller? No, no.

And again, that's, that's part of our, for me personally, we're

at AC plus level to get to the A's, to get to the A's stars to

get up to the Cristiano Ronaldo level.

You know, customer service is, is vital.

It's imperative. It's the difference between

getting a customer to see what you want to do and getting them

to action it or it's getting those callbacks, it's getting

those dissatisfied customers because you're not winning the

battle. And, and we both know, we all

know anyone listening to this knows that most pest control is

actually done by the customer. You know, sort your bins out,

clear up proof that, sort that out.

You know, we come along and we monitor them.

Yeah, we pick up, pick up the stragglers, so to speak.

And it's, it's the, you know, it's the customer that does all

the work, really. Yeah, it is.

I I'm going off my phone at the minute.

I recognise the best because I don't know what's happening.

It's really, and I've never had it before, but I tell you what,

if this goes off on my phone, definitely jinxed.

I tell you it's it's me. I'm, I'm.

When it comes to technology, I'm.

I'm cursed. If anyone can hear echoing and

chat, let me know because I've never done it off my phone

before, but I thought I'd try that.

But you got some, you got some great points there.

I got, I heard the majority of it, but that's a good way.

You are right. There's obviously blocks

sometimes and it, it, it could be, you could say, do you want

me to do it? And then you are right, it could

be that it could be basically they're paid a lot more.

They don't see why sometimes why it should be their job

definitely, but it's a way of conveying it.

But I hear the likes of because I mentioned like customer

service to Alex Wade on the when I went on the beauties and

beasties about I went. I went on about dead animals

because I made a poster course, a lot of controversy and I went

on there and I was, I was talking about how I got into

pest management and how when I first started, obviously I was

working, my dad, still do now, but I was terrible at talking to

customers. And I eventually got to the

point where I was very good at talking to customers.

I mentioned that in general, it's not something the industry

teaches people. But he did say though, the likes

of Renterkill, they do train all their stuff how to do customer

service. The big boys do, but most small

to medium sized companies, they generally don't.

Yeah. Yeah.

And generally as an industry, we, we, we, we follow similar

training patterns. We know how many poos the mouse

does. And we know which law says that

we've got to control rabbits on our land.

And, you know, this is this is, this is what we say are the

right things to do. And, and I think, you know, I

think to myself, if, if Cristiano Ronaldo was a pest

controller, would he be working on his customer service skills?

You bet your bottom dollar he would.

He'd be, he'd be working those because he would, he would look

at things and say, you know, ultimately I want to get the

things that I need to, which is to, to, to get pests, to get, to

get premises pest free. And in order to do that I need

to influence customers. Yeah, you do.

It's it. It's a learning skill.

I'm getting there. It's not always easy.

Sometimes we've just filled the hole for nothing because they

wouldn't do it. I just did it myself.

That's fine. I'm not going to charge you

because it won't get done. Basically.

Sometimes you have to do that. Yeah, that's definitely and.

Oh, what's going on there? Hello.

Can anyone hear me in chat? I'm not sure if it's me or Paul.

It's Paul. It's him now.

But yeah, thanks for watching. Susan Hudson.

Paul is right. I do believe customer service

skills on oh really needed. I do agree with that.

I do. Thanks for watching on LinkedIn.

It's something that we're not opera.

I'm learning that skill. I am.

It's it's not these. Where am I?

Oh, there we go. Now it's you.

Now it's you. I told you it's, it's my curse.

I forgot what I'm saying. But we were talking about, I

meant I just mentioned sometimes I filled the odd hole for free

because it won't get done. That's right.

And I think the point I was, I was going to come back and I

think that's really good. And it was to pick up on a point

you made a few moments ago, which was about I'm still

learning. And the first part of becoming

good at what you do is knowing and recognising you know

nothing. You know, I start every training

course I do by saying I know that much about pest control

because I feel I know nothing. I know absolutely nothing about

pest control. I've, I've, I've got this tiny

little bit of information and I, I learn things every single day.

Every single day I'm picking up new skills and I think it,

that's really healthy attitude to have.

It's a healthy attitude to say, I'm new to this.

I'm a beginner, you know, and I'm prepared to pick things up

and try different techniques and change the way we do things and

find new ways of doing it. And I think industries generally

are quite set in their ways, whether it's pest control or any

other industry, we become set in our ways.

And as a pest control industry, one of the things that I'm keen

to try and change is to break these boundaries of say, oh, I

know this. So I'm, I'm a level 2.

I've I've got here and I know what I need to know to go and do

my job. And it's just like, well,

knowledge is power. I, I, I generally believe the

more, the more you, the more you learn, the more you earn.

And whether that's earning money or it's earning early finishes,

or it's earning 5 star reviews or it's earning praise from

somebody for helping them out, you know, it doesn't have to be

money, you know, But the more you learn, the more you earn and

the more you'll get out of this job, 100% you'll get more out

there. Such a good term that the more

you learn, the more you learn. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's and Hudson and

Linkedin's put every day to school.

That's true. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's it's the moment that we shut things off.

And I remember sort of a while ago, I'm not very good with

time, time passes me by. But I think when the first round

of crew changes came in that people had to retrain.

So people had certain certificates that weren't

recognised by crew. And I remember working for the

BPCA running training courses and I had a room full of 20

blokes and they all had done like old qualifications that

were no no longer valid. And they would sit there and

they'd have their arms crossed like this, and they would say

I've. Been a lot of them were

grandfathered in no, but by a basis prompt a lot.

Of them were, but there were some that weren't so.

There were some that. Weren't.

So I'm going back sort of a period of time, I want to say 10

years. Lots of these training courses

that we were running safe used to identify training courses

where people were coming on it and they were saying you can't

teach me anything about pest control.

I've been doing it 20 years. I know what I'm doing.

I love those courses. I absolutely love them because

it was like great. You know everything, you know

everything. So you know the.

Resistance take over. Yeah, you know, you know the

resistance status of rats in your area.

And they were like, what do you mean?

And we'd start exploring the map.

We'd start talking about behavioural resistance, we'd

start talking about how the chemicals work.

We'd start talking about habitat modification.

We'd start talking about some of these new, new, new things that,

that we were doing. And, and by the end of these

courses, I had a room full of people that were leaning forward

saying to me, I want to learn, learn more.

And, and, and that to me as, as someone who does a reasonable

amount of, I don't know what the right word is, education,

training, mentoring, hopefully improving the industry was, was,

you know, that, that really I earned a lot those days.

I earned a lot of, I'm doing the right things.

And it, it felt good to be pushing the industry forward,

but it takes time. It takes time.

And I don't want to take away from the fact that as an

industry, we're doing amazing things, you know, from where we

were to where we are, You know, in the time I've been in the

industry 25 years, it's been massive differences, massive,

massive differences. It would be great that we carry

on that and we become the people that are leading the way rather

than other people telling us perhaps how we should do pest

management. So I'm, I'm talking about

audited sites, for example, you know, one of my pet hates is

that Marks and Spencer's tell us how to do pest control.

Tesco's tell us how to do pest control.

And I really don't think I think it should be.

We're dragging Marks and Spencer's and Tesco Tesco's up

to the level because we are the we are the experts, we are seen

as the people that really are driving the process long way.

So you say that is it actually Marks and Spencer's that right

the pest control code of conduct then on the sides is it them?

Yeah. So if you are manufacturing food

that has got the M&S logo on it, mound by their manufacturing

standard. So do they have experts that

tell them what should be done? Yeah, yeah, they, they, they

have, they, they consult with pest control experts.

I'm I'm sure people are are involved with it, but certainly

there are people in the food industry who are very

knowledgeable on pest control. Yeah.

So as as standard, the last two factories that I've been working

at in the last few weeks, one of them has 2 level 2 qualified

pest controllers. And.

One one of them has 60. OK.

And one of the factories, there's a chap there.

He's, he's, he's an amazing good friend of mine.

I've known him for many years. And if you are a new pest

controller turning up at his factory, he used to have a trick

where he had a flower beetle in a pot in his desk and he would

slide the flower beetle across the desk to you to say, oh, I

found this on on the factory floor this morning.

Could you help me tell me what it is and tell me what I need to

do? He knew exactly what it was.

You know, when I see this guy, we speak in scientific names.

He'll tell me that the Tribolium count is doing well.

Plodia's not so good at the moment.

And we've got a few Stigobiums. This is a customer talking to

us. And.

What he's doing is he's sense checking the person that's

walked into his factory claiming to be a pest control

professional and there are two, there are two answers that he

would accept. He would accept.

That's a flower beetle he would accept.

I don't know what that is at the moment.

Let me take this sample away and get it identified with you.

Then I'll let then I'll let you know what it is.

What he will not accept is someone bullshitting him.

What he will not accept is someone saying, oh, that's a,

that's a carpet beetle. That is, You might as well walk

out that food factory straight away because he, he, he would

say, what, why am I going to listen to you?

Why am I going to take advice from someone that doesn't even

know what this insect is and doesn't know how to behave

professionally? Why are you walking into my

factory telling me how to do pest control when you don't know

how to do it yourself? So there are some very

knowledgeable people in the food industry when it comes to pest

control. But to answer your question,

Marks and Spencer's write the code of practise.

If you produce Marks and Spencer's food, if you produce

food that goes into Tesco's. So Tesco's labelled food and

then you're bound by the Tesco's manufacturing standard, ALDI,

Asda Co-op, Waitrose. They've all got their own.

They've. All got their own.

I've never heard of anyone mentioned the ALDI audit

standards before. I've never heard anyone before.

There's organic standards, there's Red Tractor standards,

there's Halao standards, there's well, standards, Subway

standards, Mont. What's it called?

Mondele? I've got a standard, standard

salsa have got a standard BRC have got a standard.

So you could walk into a food factory that's operating on 8

different standards and that's where it starts to get starts to

get interesting. Is it all in your head or do you

keep checking? I, I have to, I don't, I don't

remember all of them. I remember some key things.

There's some key things I remember.

So you know, just just to give examples of some of these

standards in, in the Tesco standards, they say things like

if you use break back traps for monitoring them, then they have

to be checked at least once a week.

And if you're using those for control purposes, IE someone's

seen a mouse and you put break back traps down, they have to be

checked once a day. So.

Something like that would would obviously you'd have to do your

risk assessment, which that would cost obviously them more

money because it's more time, more manpower, more people.

And, and this is, this is, This is why the more you learn, the

more you earn. Have some people go into food

factories and say, Oh yeah, we'll, we'll service this

package factory for 50P. And they've gone, well, hang on

a minute. You know, I mean, you know, if

you get one mouse in here on the M&S standard, if you get a mouse

inside a food factory, you have to do a follow up every other

day, every other day. So if it was today, what is it

today, Tuesday? So if we had a mouse today, we'd

have to come back on Thursday. Absolutely, doesn't it?

Absolutely. Monday and then one seven days

after. So you're doing 4 follow-ups for

every mouse in a food factory? So you've got to be charging so

that, can't you? Well, you've got to have a

system, you know, and, and this is where, this is where working

with your clients is, is quite important.

This is why some of these food factories have trained pest

controllers so that the pest control checking requirement is

not solely undertaken by the outside contractor.

You, you work in partnership. So you might say, actually we've

got Barry here who can go and check that area on Saturday to

save for pest controller coming in and costs being incurred and

all of those kind of stuff. And then you've got that joined

up approach of people working, working together.

So it's really important that that standards are understood,

really important, really important.

My probably the biggest piece of advice I can, I can give to

anyone who walks into a food factory is to understand the

standards that people are working towards.

Because as a sector, we don't. As a sector, I see it every

single, every single week of my existence as a pest controller.

I will see a company that's going, yeah, we're doing a pest

control and it's going well. We worked at BRC Standard and

they go, oh, don't know what that is.

I've, I've literally just made an appointment to go and help

someone up in Windsor. I think it's around Surrey area

and they've just failed their salsa audit.

Salsa is a very basic level food safety auditing scheme.

It's a very good one, but it's very basic level.

It's designed to help people into the into that sector.

And they didn't have any trending, they didn't have maps

that were signed off, they didn't have the safety data

sheets. It's all in the standard.

There's only 9 points in the standard I think and they failed

on two or three points of it. So you know that that clients

asked me to go in and try and try and rectify the situation

for them, help them out, move it forward.

Yeah, because I've read the BRC standards and yeah, I, I, I

don't 100% get it. I don't.

I've got no BRC sites. I haven't, but I've read them.

They're, they're generally if if you, if you take the time out to

read them, though, a lot of it makes sense.

Some of it's utter tosh, but a lot of it does make sense.

And it's just taking the time. I've read the wrong bit, but the

pest control bit was tiny. I read on that.

I may have read it wrong. There may have been more.

There's about. 14 points on the BRC 1, I think something like

1415 different points. So so yeah, it's not it's not

huge, but some of it, some of it is is really important.

And if, if you know what the what the standard is like, I

think I don't know this off by heart, but the BRC standard I

think has something in it that says something along the lines

of if you have a canopy where birds may perch and cause

contamination issues, then you should get those proofed.

So instantly when you walk onto a site and you look up and you

say you've got a canopy here and under the BRC standard, it says

you really should have that proof.

Would you like me to help you with that?

It's a very positive statement to be made because you are, you

are helping the customer to be compliant and offering a

solution. So you're saying that's wrong.

That's why it's wrong. And hey, here's a solution.

And if that ends up with money in the pest controller's pocket,

then I, I think that's a, that's a very, that's a, that's a good

thing. What I dislike in sales is where

we sell things that people don't need, want or, or or require

that that's not good sales. In my in my book, good sales is

where you're identifying an issue, coming up with a good

solution and helping the customers out.

Yeah, that's that's what it's all about.

It is with well it is, yeah, because that that's your job to

sell what customer actually needs.

Not yeah, that's what they're really isn't needed and it's

just for extra money. They're buying.

They're buying expert. They're buying your knowledge.

That's what they're buying. You know, anyone can put baits

down. Anyone can buy traps.

And you know, I hear it quite a lot about amateur use products.

And I have my own view on amateurs products that they

should always be available for amateurs because, you know,

it's, it's for the good of humanity, generally speaking,

that amateurs have access to things.

And I, I always think of a story which we call a story where I

had a lady phone me up in tears because she had rat droppings in

her house and she'd phoned the local council up.

This is when I ran my pest control business and the council

were going to charge her £90 to come and get rid of the rat.

And I thought to myself, if I was you, I would go with the

council because I'm going to charge you a lot more money.

And it turned out to be in my local town where I live.

And her property turned out to be above one of the restaurants

in the local town where I work. And then I started to think to

myself, do you know what? And you could hear in this

young, young lady's voice. You could hear.

Yeah, I may have been being mugged off, I don't know.

But I could hear in her voice. I thought I could hear in her

voice someone who was desperate and someone who was.

These rats are pooping in my baby's bed I want rid of.

Them she. Was not someone that could go

down the shop and buy some traps and she genuinely couldn't

afford the 90 lbs to go and put the rat poison.

You know, to get the, to get the person in and, and we ended up,

one of my colleagues at the time ended up going round and seeing

her and sorting that out because he was in the, he was in the

restaurant anyway. So going upstairs wasn't too

much of A, wasn't too much of a challenge.

And so I, I think, you know, amateurs do 'cause damage they,

they do 'cause environmental pollution they do, some of them

do use it badly, but I think the vast majority of people are

using it correctly. And if the amateurs weren't

helping control pests in our local community, then I think

we'd have a lot more work to do. We would, we're a lot busier.

But which did read the lab? To be honest, the I don't think

amateurs generally read the label.

I, I will, I will challenge any professional pest controllers

right now to, to make a statement of when when was the

last time we read a label. Yeah.

Because, you know, I myself, I've been caught out with this

kind of stuff before. You know, I, I, I, I remember a

few years ago we did some Burr baiting and someone.

Said no, I just mean basic things like, sorry, I just mean

basic things like you've been given bait and it says put it in

a box and it's chopped around the the garden loose.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But that's what I mean in

regards to that because I've seen it and I've said you must

pick that up. I picked it up and put it in a

bag. I was like, this needs to go

away. Yeah.

That's not how you do it. I absolutely agree with you.

There's some absolute you can't legislate for all people.

But not all people are like that, obviously.

I'm not saying. That and I, I sometimes

challenge people and I like, I have a phrase, I like to

positively poke people. I like to get people thinking.

I like to challenge, challenge people's, challenge people's

mindsets. Because I often say on training

courses, I say, OK, let's let's ban amateurs identicide.

So what? What else?

What else is dangerous? What?

What about the plumbers? What about the plumbers?

Are they going to turn around and say, actually, amateurs

shouldn't be able to play around with the plumbing because they

could flood someone's house, they could cause damage.

Then the electricians are going to put their hands up and say,

right now I can buy everything I need to rewire a house.

Yeah, I could go down B and Qi could buy all the bits and

pieces, the screwdrivers and whatever I could set by

someone's house like that. Can I go to the Halfords and buy

stuff to change the brake discs in a car?

I don't know how to do that. I could do that on my car and

kill someone because I've done that.

So it's kind of then looking at what else is going to be if, if

you're stopping that in our sector, are you then stopping

something else? I also say to people, how many

of us paint our own homes? How many of us do our own

decorating? Well, I would do it at my house,

but yeah. I have to be very careful here

because my wife is amazing at decorating my Mick.

Is doing decorating. I'm terrible.

I'm glad you said that. Because I get a lot of stick for

that. I'm terrible.

Honestly, I am. Why are?

You Why are you talking about decorating?

You don't even know what decorating is, but how many of

us pay money to get a decorator? In not many.

Not many of us. Why don't we do that?

That's the question, and it's not directed in any way.

But why don't we do that? Why why don't, why don't we do

that? Paint's dangerous.

Paint's harmful. You know, think about it that

way, Do you? Why are we not spending our

money and for me it would be because I can't afford it and

then we're starting to put people into a position if we ban

amateurish for dentosome. This is just my opinion.

If we ban amateurish for dentosome, we then push people

into doing other things and they may be things that are, you

know, against animal welfare, which is saying I'm I'm very pro

making sure we you know, I'm very respectful for the animals

we control. I've got a lot of respect for

rats, pigeon. It's always be careful what you

wish for as well, wouldn't it? Yeah.

And it's like, obviously with the there's been a lot of people

don't realise like, you know, when the the glue, but but, but

board legislation came in. I had to correct a few people

and say, actually the BPCA were a very vocal part of trying to

stop a lot of what happened. And from what I understand, no

expert in it. They basically ignored the pest

control experts and steamrolled ahead.

It's from what I gather, but a lot of but a lot of pest

controllers that don't are not in trade bodies or which don't

look at the latest things presumed it was the trade bodies

doing it instead and it wasn't it was the government.

But to to be to the Bpcas credit they I think the MPTA helped but

BBBPCA did have a massive they tried massively hard to try and

keep it in a toolbox. Although it isn't a toolbox.

Most companies aren't bothering anymore.

It's just not worth it. And it's, it, it's a floor piece

of legislation. And I, I, I do have

conversations with Natural England on this.

And, you know, it's, it's one of those things that, as you

rightly say, it was, you know, I was part of the, the, the team,

we were, we were all on the board given different sort of

areas to look at myself along with Doctor Mike Ayers.

We were looking at the, the scientific, the technical, the

geeky stuff as to find anything in the literature that would

give us evidence. And that was where really the

birth of the academic working group came from.

We really struggled. We could find loads of

scientific evidence to say how bad glue boards were.

We really struggled to find any actually, these are really

useful. So it was tried really hard, but

unfortunately the voice of people who who want to support

animal welfare, which the pest control industry also wants to

support animal welfare, their voice was much louder.

And This is why it's so imperative as an industry,

whether you are NPTABPCA, whoever, it's so important that

as an industry we have a unified message.

That is we need to work professionally, we need to be

trusted with our tools, we need to lobby, we need to get into

Parliament, we need to influence the right people, get into the

rooms where the politicians talk to be able to influence stuff.

And at the time at the BPCA, we had, we employed a contractor, a

lobbyist who was who was actually working.

I used to call him the mole. He was working in Parliament.

So he, he was somebody who could open doors and get into

conversations with people. And a story that I'm told was

that at the last minute he was one of the people that was

influential in, in speaking to one of the ministers to say you

need to put some licence in here.

Because if this, you know, if you ban them outright, which was

where it was heading, then there could be a situation where there

are sick people that that are, you know, are caused problems by

rodents due to a piece of legislation that you've passed

as a minister. So think carefully about what

you do. And that's why one of the

reasons the licencing came in, which we're very excited about.

However, it just turns out to be a completely flawed piece of

legislation. And I will state categorically,

categorically that is done more harm to the welfare of rodents

than it has saved. And I'll give you some some

statistics. So I'm very lucky.

I work with lots of different organisations and I was working

with an inner city at London Council recently and I posed the

question to the people that I was doing some work with.

I said how many of these domestic properties you turn up

in London are the customers, are the clients, are the residents

using glue board? And I got them to write down on

a piece of paper. What percentage of people, Sean,

do you reckon customers, clients, home owners were using

glue boards? 90%. 90%.

Oh, really? 90% of the properties in this

part of London that the council were visiting clients were using

their own glue boards. Were they checking them every 24

hours? Were they?

Heck, were they humanely dispatching the rodents?

Not a chance. Were they using the correct size

boards? Were they doing all the other

things? No, they weren't.

And the real thing that really gets me and this is this is one

of my pet peeves, is this piece of legislation is that he's made

me a criminal because the the legislation states that you

cannot lay a glue board. I get that, that I understand

where that's come from. The second part states that if

you allow a glue board to remain in place in a manner that may

enable it to catch a rodent, you also commit offence.

So I. Don't think you should get it.

That's the bit I don't agree you shouldn't get in because it

apparently you can go to prison for it.

You can go to prison for the first part.

You can go to prison for illegally laying a glue board.

I think the second part is only a fine.

But. I I turned up at food factory

not that long ago and there were some glue boards in in a roof

space that I happened to check maybe 20 glue boards.

So, So now I'm already on a tight schedule as we all are as

pest controllers. So what do I do?

Do I now spend the next hour removing the glue boards that

someone else has laid illegally? Because otherwise that makes me

a criminal. And I don't think, I don't think

I've done anything wrong there because I've just poked my head

up above the ceiling to check what's going on.

And I think Natural England have got this massively wrong,

massively wrong that the training is it's, you know, it

costs hundreds of pounds to get a licence.

You're not going to get a licence.

It is, it is flawed, it is wrong.

And I have, I do some work in other countries.

And one of my good friends says to me, if you can imagine a

thick West Indian accent, he says to me, boy, in England, you

is putting the mouse before the man you know, and and he's

completely right. He he belly rolls on the floor

and he says well. A lot of the American friends I

have on podcast, they laugh at us saying you blank, you blank

glue balls. They laugh.

They do. What you doing particularly, you

know, in places like London where you know, the mice don't

go in the boxes, they don't eat the bait, they don't go on the

traps and you walk into someone's house and you remove

what is working the glue boards. And you said, no, no, no, we've

got to use these things. And it's just like, well, my

kids asleep in that room and there's a rat running around and

you want me to not put the glue board down?

Sorry, that's not not how it works.

I invited one of the chaps from Natural England to come out with

me. When I do, I do on site training

for these guys, girls in in in the City of London.

And I said, you come out with me, come out with me.

And you can tell the residents that they're they're breaking

the law by using those glue boards.

And you can remove them. You can be the person that, that

that walks out of someone's house having not removed the

glue boards because, you know, you've left, you've left a

disabled lady with no option except for the rats crawling

over her feet. You've left, you know, a mother

and their kids because housing repairs are all shot through the

pieces. You know, and you've taken away

the one thing that actually is making a difference because the

rat might suffer. And please, please don't, I

don't want anyone to ever think that I don't respect rats and

mice and all, all the animals that we control.

I completely do. But we're here to do a job and

sometimes our job is not, not particularly nice, you know,

and, and there has to be that, that point where, you know, you

have to try other things, you have to go through the process.

And I actually think that the, that the PMA code of practise

that we had, NPTACIEH and BPCA code of practise that we had was

pretty good. The bit that was missing in my

part was the enforcement of it. So all that needed to happen in

my opinion, was for for Natural England or some enforcement

body, whoever that may be, to come out and actually hold

people who weren't using glue balls correctly to account so

that it reinforced that message. That was all that was needed, I

think. Not a brand new piece of

legislation that just created. It created a mess.

It created an amazing mess. I mean, in all honesty, I've

never, I've never had to use one.

But we but but I would never like to use a tool when you

toolkit in case that day comes and that's what happened

effectively. So on your auditing sites do you

because obviously you probably do some places that would

qualify are any of the companies using them or not?

Is it just? No, not.

In the UK, not in the UK, OK, It's just just not there.

And again, it is very divided. You know, I did some work for a

company where I went to see their with their team down in

the West Country and I did a training session and we said

glue boards, you know, we introduced the new licence, what

was going on and they kind of went, yeah, doesn't really

affect me. I'm not bothered.

I did the same training course in the City of London for the

same company. And that section of the training

lasted about two hours because it was a very important thing,

because they were really, this is going to, this is going to

have a massive impact on, on what we do, you know, so it is

location specific. And I, I just think it, yeah,

yeah. They're not nice that you can't,

you can't, you can't argue that they are.

But, you know, it's, it's a tool that should be used responsibly

by responsible people. And the only people not using

glue boards now are the responsible people who were

following the code of practise. Some people are still using

them. And those people that are using

them, they're not, they're not imposing any animal welfare

standards. But who?

Who's been prosecuted? Who's been held to account?

I don't think now, I don't think the police know what to do, do

they? Well, you know, and, and this is

this is, I mean, I spoke at the Chartered Institute of the

Government Health Conference and, you know, it was the

question was who's who's enforcing this?

And the answer is the police. And all these EH OS were on this

call and they were like, well, hang on a minute.

So if I find a glue board, I've got to phone the police.

Yes. Now, don't, don't get me wrong,

you know, you know, if it yeah, we were, we, we live in a

democratic society. And if they are the laws, they

are the laws. And I myself don't use glue

boards in the UK anyway, because it's against the law.

And I respect the law. I, I, I abide by the law.

But I do think, I do think at some point, I mean, I, I

sometimes have crazy ideas, Sean.

And my crazy idea is that we pick a day.

We pick a day, let's call it, I don't know, August the 7th.

And every pest controller places one glue board in their front

room. Just one.

And on the 8th, on August the 7th, all of us, every single

pest control up and down the country, we all phone the police

to report a crime, which is the illegal use of a glue board.

I'll be honest, I, I in all reality, and you know this and

most people do, if you rang the police, they'd probably laugh

you off the phone. We've got murders to be dealing

with and all sorts. But.

Absolutely. But wouldn't it be an amazing

bit of PR to be out there to say this is ridiculous, it's a

ridiculous thing for the police to enforce this.

It's an utter waste of everyone's time.

Let's get back around the table and sort something out.

And it's it's very easy to sort this kind of stuff out.

You have training courses for people, you give them an ID

number. Look at Scotland, look at what

Scotland are doing with their traps.

So now in Scotland if you operate a a break back trap, a

Fen trap, a dock trap, AWCS. Trap.

You have to have a special training course.

I think it would cost 70 odd pounds reasonable and you get

you get given an ID number and your ID number must be on your

traps. Anyone.

Any trap that has any kind of animal welfare issues associated

with it, you can trace it back to whose trap it was and they

can be held accountable for it. That's the answer, in my

opinion, is that you have glue boards, you have barcodes, you

have numbers, they're assigned to people.

And if there's any animal welfare issues with that glue

board, then then that becomes becomes a thing that becomes an

issue. And you actually allow the

professionals to use them under strict controls rather than the

ridiculous state that we're in right now.

Jason Bird was saying I don't know if you know this, do you?

Do we know how many lives have actually been granted in the in

the UK or not? Is there not a number?

Yes, we did. Anna did a Freedom of

Information request to naturally open on this not so long ago.

And it was, it was minimal. I, I I don't have the numbers to

hand, but I think it was it was certainly less than 10.

Oh, OK, it. Was it was It was minimal and

you know that that suggests what does that suggest it just?

People have actually used them in general.

Not apply for one of the licence.

So, you know, and it's a, it's a, it's a yeah.

And, and maybe Natural England are sitting there going, oh,

this is successful. We've reduced glue board numbers

down. That's an incredibly naive thing

to think if that's what they do think because people are just

going around, you know, I was in, I was in London the other

day, walking up and down the High Street.

You pop into the shops and there's glue boards for sale,

there's tubes of glue for sale. You can buy it all, you can buy

it all and and what would you do?

It's a big insect trap. It's a big insect trap and.

During the CIEH conference, it was an online 1.

And I said, I said to people, if you could just bear with me a

second or two and I went online and I typed in insect trap and I

said here we go. Here's an example.

It was a lady called Susan. I knew that because that's my

wife's name. It was, it wasn't my wife.

I'd like to point out she wasn't using an insect trap, but it was

Susan had bought an insect trap and she left a comment, you

know, you can leave comments on Amazon.

It said this was fantastic. It caught the mice within a

couple of days and it was just. There you go.

Where? Where do you want to go?

Should I, Should I now phone the police and report her because

there's been a crime committed, you know, I mean.

Exactly. Bonkers.

Exactly. So where do you, where do you

think the future of pest management is going to go

towards? Do you think there's going to be

a big, a big drive towards digital remote monitoring?

Do you think so? I'm currently doing a trial with

Syngenta for the secure secure choice 24/7 boxes.

I am, I'm new to all this but it's pretty cool when it goes

off the the activations but for. For, for, for me personally, and

I'm an old, I'm an old man. And for me, pest control is

about the lump of meat that turns up in a factory, that

turns up at someone's house. Eyes that see, knees that bend,

a mind that works, a torch with batteries.

Go and look for the pests and I can guarantee you now.

OK, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example of how

I see things. I I'm involved with the factory.

It's got a cockroach problem or has had a cockroach problem for

many years. There are 400 plus cockroach

traps in this food factory. OK.

It's a big food. Factory.

It's 400 cockroach traps and one of the recent bits of data

analysis that I did. We looked at the number of

cockroaches that were caught and I reckon it was below 10.

Over a 345 month period it was below 10 In that factory.

The staff conduct a daily check for cockroaches.

That's really good, I think. Well, it's kind of.

It's come about because they've had to.

It's not. It wasn't.

Let's go check with the cockroaches.

They. Were kind of pushed towards that

and they've between them during those searches they found many,

many hundreds if not verging on thousands of cockroaches.

So my point when it comes to little bits of plastic that sit

down in certain places telling us what's going on, I think you

need to be very careful. I could go to many of my sites

that I go to and I look at the routine visits and I say

nothing's been captured. There are no pests here.

When I can see the smear mark going over the bait box or the

droppings in the corner or the door that's got a hole in it.

And people will argue that if we have remote monitoring, it will

mean technicians have more time to carry out their inspections.

I disagree with that, unfortunately.

I think that's that's a nice world to live in.

If we have remote monitoring, technicians will have more sites

to visit because that's how business works.

You think though in addition with with that you could also

implement say Rio link cameras with the boxes so you can see

what's physically going on that I, I think that's going to

become more of a part of it I think as well there's.

Some massive uses of technology, Absolutely.

Let's go, let's go back to animal welfare.

Let's put a pigeon trap down. Why aren't we putting cameras on

pigeon traps to alert us as soon as the birds in there or a Fen

trap? That side of technology I

completely agree with. I've done it before with

squirrel jobs where the the net, the good nature ones.

We've put a camera with it we have.

Yeah. And I think, I think there are

some amazing uses of technology. And, you know, I suppose my, my

view is I was involved back in the early 2000s when I worked

for Renterkill because I was based in Sussex, where

Renterkill's head office was at the time at Fellcourt.

And I was given things to play with.

So I was given what was called, it was called Pest Connect.

And basically this was a trap. The mouse went through it.

The trap sent an e-mail to say it had been activated.

This was 20 years ago. Yeah.

So I was sent out to trial it. And we put different things in

different places and all this. And it kind of, I don't think it

went anywhere. I yeah, I didn't hear much of

it. It didn't, it didn't become this

massive thing in our industry. And I think there is a danger

that we can over tech, an industry that is all about

service, it's all about the interactions you have with

customers. It's vanished, yes.

Thanks for watching everyone. I'm sure I'll be back in a

minute. I will.

But yeah, we're just discussing the future of person management

at the moment. I'm on my phone because my PC

has been playing up. Hang on, there he is.

Hang on. There we go.

It's back again. We were doing so well.

We had a. Great.

You haven't been the amount of times that I've done it.

Don't worry. Yeah.

So, so I think, you know, as an industry, we are, you know, it's

the value of, of the person and we can do so much more good by

having good communications rather than a bit of kit.

I think kit is, is useful. It, it shows professionalism.

Some of it is amazing. Some of it is, is just not

hitting the market, you know, in my opinion.

And I think, you know, if I, if I go into the food industry, you

know, the number of people that are, that are, are saying to me,

Paul, I just want a piece of paper with my results written on

it. I don't want a portal.

Well, I've got to click 7 buttons to bring up a graph.

I want that information, but I want it in an easy accessible

format. You know, it's huge.

So listening to our customers, understanding our customers and

just getting down and dirty with pest control, getting into the

spaces where the pests are, being inquisitive.

They're the things that we need to go forward trialling

different things, you know, having, you know, it's the

equivalent of me buying the best football boots.

I could buy the best football boots in the world.

If I'm not prepared to train, work hard at my craft, apply

myself, be dedicated, the results going to be the same.

The ball ain't going to go in the net no matter what football

boots I've got on. It's about the, about the lump

of meat that's here. And I, I think, I think some,

some technology is great. I use technology, don't get me

wrong. You know, if we've got an area

we can't get to put a remote trap up there, put a talking

trap up there. That makes perfect sense.

But as a as an addition, as a bit of spice to a meal, not the

main course. Yeah, no, I, I, I so far.

I mean, I'm doing a trial because obviously how I got the

trial was now how my mouth gets me on LinkedIn and stuff.

I said digital's not for small businesses.

Next thing you know, I've got open a trial, but play with it.

Yeah. You know, I think some of this

is, some of this is good, you know, some of it.

I think is, is is misdirected. You know, it's, it's, you know,

I, I, I used, there was a, a fly killer where you could take

pictures of the, the flies on the back of the, of, of the back

of the sticky pad. And when I was doing my master's

research, I used that to help me, help me do my research.

It was brilliant. It was amazing.

It was the right tool when I, when I spoke to customers about

it and said, you know, I had a customer who this would be

perfect for, absolutely perfect. And he looked at the price and

went, no, not quite the budget for that.

And this was big food. This was this was places that

did have, you know, it's just not quite.

Maybe it was my sales technique. Maybe it was my.

It is quite hard to to put that across if it really is a lot a

lot more, you know, but. But but yeah, I, I, I can't get

away from the fact that pest control has been, is will always

be about the pest controller. Definitely is, but that's one

thing. But although although the box

can tell you've had X amount of activations, you could still

have a problem somewhere else where they haven't gone in

because they weren't always go in a box, were they?

And. Yeah.

And and, you know, it wasn't in the UK, it was in a different

country, but a company was doing some work and there were some

rats in the basement and they were using these super duper

boxes that told you if it went in and all the rest of it.

And we weren't catching any rats.

And I suggested to them that we needed just to buy some, some

rat traps, just some rat traps, Place the rat traps along where

the rats are running and we'll catch some rats.

And they were so against this. Oh no, we can't do this and we

won't do this. It's got to be in a box in the

end. In the end, they, they, they,

they would beat them down. We'd beat them down and they put

the rat traps in. And guess what started to

happen? They.

Would they? It was like a it was like a

massacre. It was, you know, rats were

being caught, you know, for months that was caught.

Now rats were being caught on a regular basis.

You know it, it was a £2.50 solution where they'd applied a

£500 solution. And what had happened there is

the technology, as it often does in big companies.

I've seen this myself in some of the organisations I've worked

for. The technology comes in and the

technology becomes a sales thing that people sell to people.

Oh, you must have this. And this is what was happening.

Like I say it wasn't in the UK but the pest controllers were

trying to say it's illegal for us to use a trap outside of our

super duper Really impressive box.

Is it? Is it?

No, it's not. I suppose to, but as long as

it's long as the area is is secured and no one can get to

the area. But if it's sealed off and it's

somewhere where no one can get to it is that it's fine, isn't

it? Is that correct?

I'm so long as it's safe, Yeah. I mean, there's lots of pieces

of legislation that come into play, but anything you put in

place should not harm other people or other creatures and

should should not 'cause unnecessary suffering to the

animal you're trying to capture, you know?

So if you put a break back trap down, so long as you position it

in the right way, you use it in the right way, you check it the

right frequency, use good quality traps, and you position

it correctly, then then that's perfectly OK.

But yeah, technology got in the way.

I think technology got in the way of this organisation of just

saying no, we sell the technology to you as a customer.

That's what we do. And we have to be careful of

that because in some instances it's the right thing to use.

OK? So what with regards to digital,

I'm not on about actual monitoring now.

I'm on about because we made the switch, because we were paper,

you know, paper treatment reports and everything.

We were and back last year, we went to Pestech and because I

said to my dad, I want to go digital, I want to get pages to

go digital. So when you look around all the

stalls and we in the end, we decided to go with powered now.

And I tell you now, we started rolling it out to clients in in

February last year. And I tell you what, my dad

absolutely loves it now. I think it's so easy.

You can talk to the tablet, it can write what you're saying.

He thinks he's great and all. All of our customers like it

too. Yeah.

She thought that everyone would hate it.

But we've also said, though, if you still want to print out the

paperwork and having a book, you can, but we won't be doing it.

You can. Yeah.

Because. But I think it's do you?

Do you, when you audit sites, do you prefer people that you

didn't have you found a lot a lot more company issues you use

digital now as opposed to pen and paper or?

Yeah. And you know, so when I had my

pest control business, we had two systems.

We had a digital system and we had a paper system.

And there are pros and cons of both of those systems.

Some customers absolutely loved, loved the digital, some

customers love the paper. And I think it's important as we

talk about customer service, I think it's important to listen

to what your customers want and help them to make the right

decisions. In the food industry, I think

it's slightly different. And I can tell you at least I

want to say 70% of the places that I walk into, they say to me

get rid of this digital. Nonsense.

Really. That's interesting.

That is, I thought they would be the places and be all up for it.

No, the problems is in food manufacturing.

Auditor turns up and I'll, I'll give you, let me, let me recount

one story. Auditor turns up.

Remember, BRC audits are unannounced.

So the auditor turns up technical managers on holiday

and anyone could be handed a pest control book.

I could hand anyone a pest control book and they could work

it out, couldn't they? They could flip through it and

see what they need to see. So now the food company the the

manager of this food company is now trying to show the order to

the online system. And.

It wasn't very easy to navigate the, the online system.

When I've audited sites that have got online systems, I don't

know all the online systems. So I say to the person, show me,

show me the Flycatch analysis. I was in one food factory

recently and I said, I want to see the flycatch analysis.

And after half an hour, I lost my patience and went, this is

just not working for me. You know, you're the person who,

who is supposed to be looking at the results.

You're supposed to be looking at it's an action and things and

and you're doing that. It lacks some versatility.

Some of the systems, so audit standards say if you put

additional baits down, you should create a map of where

they are. Now.

Some systems I know will do that, but some systems, some

systems can't do that. One I've got does powered now,

although they are they're not as known in pest control.

I'll give them take my hats off to them.

If you've got anything you want putting on or additionals or

they you're not just a number, they will take your feedback

100% and do it. They will.

And I'm not, I'm not anti online reporting.

Yeah, I will say in the food manufacturing sector at the

moment. OK.

Most of the people I'm interacting with are give me a

folder with a map with reports that I can action rather than an

e-mail and some some challenges that that that are, you know,

well, we've seen it ourselves with Internet connectivity.

You know, it's not always. The best I would say one thing

though, I mean, there is a way to say you're on the system.

You don't have to be online. You can just literally download

all them documents and put them in a folder on a computer.

You can do that as well you can. Yeah, yeah.

And like I say, I'm not, I'm not anti.

I'm. But then again, you've got to

have all logins as well, ain't you?

So say someone's on holiday. I'm I'm voicing the the feedback

that I get from. The no, I love to hear.

I love to hear the decond to it as well.

That's what we need to know. There was a food company I I was

dealing with recently where she was printing off all the reports

because she didn't trust the system.

OK. One company I know recently

changed their pest control provider because their pest

control provider said we're not providing any paper systems

anymore so they cancelled the contract.

OK. 11 Food Company came back to me and said something along the

line which made a lot of sense, which is you've sprayed this

area. I mean, I hadn't sprayed it.

He was saying, you know what happens if we sprayed this area

and you send the report to who does the report go to?

It goes to the technical manager.

Well, technical manager's on holiday for two weeks.

So now we've got part of the food factory that's been

sprayed. Maybe there's an audit, maybe

maybe someone's come in in that two week period while the report

has gone off to the technical manager who's on holiday because

we don't know if he's on holiday.

These big food factories, you might turn up, do a spray, you

send the report off, you don't know who's got that report and

you get a challenge there. It it, it has so many benefits

and for customers, I think small retailers, big retailers who've

got sites all over the place. Fantastic, fantastic.

My habitat, as I said before, is the food industry.

And at the moment the people in my ecosystem, the people in the

food world are saying not I'm not, not really up for that.

I'll, I'll give you one more with, with, with our, our

system, we had an online system and we, we had a small bakery

and the EHO turned up and said, great, fantastic.

Just here to a visit. Can you show me your pest

control records? And on, off the guy goes to his

computer and he starts trying to search for all of the reports

that have been sent through because I don't know if he's

probably like me. I get hundreds of emails a day.

So they're all sat in his inbox and he's trying to find them all

whilst the EHO is standing there for 20 minutes.

During those 20 minutes the Ehos already written out an

improvement notice that says I'm giving you an improvement

notice. I'll be back in three weeks time

because I don't believe you've read, you've actioned, you've

understood that that customer was on the phone to me shouting

at me saying you caused me a non conformance, you caused me

issues with the EHO. Why can't I have a book?

So we gave him a book. I had other customers, I had a

pub chain that I used to look after that were on the online

system. And if I said to them, I'm going

to give you a book, they would have, they would have kicked me

off the contract. So I think online reporting for

some people is amazing, absolutely amazing.

I think in, in, in my world, it's, it's not there yet.

And I don't know whether that's just because audits are done.

Generally, I'm being, I shouldn't say things like this,

I'm being terribly stereotypical, but auditors who

turn up at food factories generally look roughly like

this. They are people who've been

brought up on pieces of paper. Maybe the new wave, the new wave

of auditors coming in who've, you know, who've had a, an iPad

in their hands since they, you know, since they came out the

womb, you know, maybe those are the people that change it.

But certainly in food, there's validity in handwritten reports.

No, I completely, I love the counter perspective from what

you're seeing because I was expecting you to go, yeah,

digital was great and everything.

And I love that perspective from the sector you're in.

It's, it's the truth. People listening will probably,

some of the pest controllers probably will know exactly what

you're talking about. They prefer paper.

We don't actually to our commercial clients that we

actually do paper, paper reports.

I think we've got one left. We haven't convinced them to

switch over, but everyone else has, yeah.

It, it was quite, quite interesting because when I had

my business and I like I said, I sold it 2019, we found that the

electronic reports to the domestic customers worked really

well. They, they really got a lot out

of that. Oh.

They love it. They do, yeah.

You know, they don't want pieces of paper, but the food industry

is very much you need to be audit ready in 45 minutes.

You need to always be audit ready.

And you know, we, we don't understand what it's like to

have an audit of your food factory.

It's like someone knocking on your door now and saying, I'm

going to, I'm going to audit all your paper systems.

I'm going to audit your van. I'm going to audit everything

you're doing. Show me what it is.

And for years, people have pointed at the pest control

folder. They've employed pest

controllers who look after that paper system.

Technicians are doing it, biologists are doing it.

They're keeping it up to date and the customers can hand that

piece of paper to the auditor and say it's all in there rather

than having to jump on their computer and do, you know, do

some filing and, and remember, you know, people in food

factories, pest controls, not their only thing.

They've got, they've got Hassop plans, they've got network

detection, they've got allergens, they've got all these

other things that they have to manage.

You know, the reason they bring us in is to make their life easy

and making, making an online system that that that requires

them to, to do the, the finding of the information can be

difficult, can be difficult. I could, I know.

No, I appreciate your your perspective on that because

obviously I don't do any food factory sites.

So I don't I don't know. So it's good to have your

perspective on it. It is because people will, will

there be there be people watching that go?

Yeah. I know exactly what he's talking

about, but I can't imagine that because it's like it's not just,

it's not just a treatment report, but he's, he's ordered

his sites. There's a lot more to it than

just like a treatment report in there.

The vast majority of places we do the it's just a monthly

inspection and there's not, there's not a massive amount.

I'd imagine whether you BRCS etcetera, it's there's loads

more to it than just yeah. So we can get away with it as

such. We can, but we can.

But I have tried to get audited sites before, but I've never

actually got it. I wanted to have a go but but.

It's something that I think I think small pest control

companies are really well set up for them.

I think people shouldn't be afraid of going for audited

sites. They should just make sure they

read the standards carefully, clearly and, and invest a bit of

time in saying that's what it says.

How, how can I prove that I'm doing that?

And that involves often involves a piece of paper.

Once you've got your system set up, it's, you know, it's, I mean

these, these are people that, you know, when we talk about

business opportunities, these are people that will, will

invest in pest control because they see the value in it.

They definitely see the value in it because you lose production

in a food factory. And yeah.

Shut down. That's it, Harry cost the

business. I'm working with one at the

moment that's lost over £2,000,000 worth of of of money

because of a pest issue and. I've not even been not even been

hacked and and. There we go.

There's, there's, there's, you know, I'm, I'm an old man and

give me a pen, give me a piece of paper and I'm happy.

You know, when you look at people like M and SI just saw on

the news today, M&S are confident that their systems

will be back up and running in the next 4 weeks.

Who's? Big that though cut off as well.

It wasn't just their online. It was like it stopped them

ordering like monster drinks and stuff because I kept going to

shop and not all the I wasn't after energy drink, but it was

all empty. It was like, what's going on

here? And I found out it was actually

a system where they order as well to all their shops was was

hacked. Yeah, some billion dollar,

billion pound business. Now they spend millions and then

they can still get hacked. Yeah, and it's, you know, how,

how secure are these pest control, you know, systems?

I I don't know enough. About I don't know, I don't need

to make. A sensible comment, but you know

as as a layperson in the street, you know the argument was always

what if they lose the folder and the argument now is what if they

get hacked? What if they?

Yeah, that's a perspective. You're correct.

Yeah, you are. You are right there.

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I, I think it's like anything, you

know, in pest control, there is not one-size-fits-all.

And a good pest controller will be able to look at all the

different options that are on the table, whether it's online

reporting, whether it's E monitoring, whether it's a

family killer that sends you pictures or it's a family SWAT.

And they'll be able to choose and recommend the right things

for that customer. And it's important that it's

important that we start looking through the eyes of the

customer. And I, I remember something when

I sold my business, the person I sold my business to said to me,

cool, you've done really well to build up this number of

customers in this period of time.

How did you do it? What was your secret recipe?

And I said, the only thing we did is we started looking at

things from a customer point of view.

It was all customer focused. You know, we weren't managing

off spreadsheets, we weren't saying oh, you've had your 8

routines so you should be happy. We were looking at it from a

what, what do they want? What does the restaurant want?

The restaurant wants, I don't know, no rats and the EHO to not

'cause them any problem. That's what they want.

So we were, we were looking at it from a customer point of

view, doing old fashioned customer service, being polite,

being positive, being inquisitive, you know, looking

at it from a customer point of view.

And I think in in today's modern age, though, those are the

things that are going to set people apart in, in my opinion,

our ability to give good customer service, be

knowledgeable, be committed, train hard in what our knowledge

and what, what skills we have, that's what's going to set

people apart. There's some good, good advice

there because I was recently had Mark Porter on and obviously I'm

trying to get more commercial sites, etcetera.

And he said, he said when you go around the customer don't, don't

just say we'll give you X amount of boxes.

Just ask them what their concerns are.

Absolutely. And I'm going to try that about

what they want, not what you want.

Ask them what they want. It's always about what they

want. But I've never done that before,

so I'm going to can't wait to do that.

But you were right, it's the same thing.

Think about the customer. So I will report back to you

when I finally give it on that. Good.

So I got a number 1. So when did you come up with the

idea of your amazing quiz books to get CPD?

It's a fun way of doing doing your CPDI think.

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm. I find traditional training

methods quite boring and quite dull.

I was very lucky in 2014, I think it would have been 2015,

the BPCA were looking for new trainers and there was a lady

called Mandy McCarthy who was the training manager at the

time. And so I, I threw my hat in the

ring and I said, yeah, I've done a few pest awareness courses.

I don't mind standing up in front of people.

I'm quite happy to do that. And she, she came down to watch

me do a session and it was very PowerPoint.

It was very kind of me talking at people.

And she said I love what you do. I love, I love how you present,

if you come and work for the BPCA, you've got to agree to

train in a different way. And I was like, OK, and she said

something to me that it was probably two years ago this

happened for me. She said, what will happen is

you will not use PowerPoint for your training courses.

You will have a box of tricks that sits behind you and you'll

know which of the training methods to use in, in, in to get

to get the point across. And I thought, there's no way

I'm ever going to go off PowerPoint.

There's there's no way that's going to happen.

And that's how I we do things now.

So instead of lecturing from a PowerPoint slide, if we're

talking about legislation, we give people little cards with

little sticky things on and they work in groups to stick it on.

And then as a trainer, I fill in the gaps of what they've got

wrong on some of the training courses that I do.

They have little cards, little pictures.

They have to match things up. In some training courses I do,

they do the work. So in groups, people present

back. They work out something in their

groups and they present back the findings.

In some training sessions, I have people walking around

classrooms with bits of card in their hand and having to match

themselves up into different pairs and, and, and this kind of

stuff. In some sessions we have, you

know, different identification activities.

Sometimes we go outside, sometimes we do different things

and it's just trying to always introduce learning by stealth.

We are pest controllers, we learn by doing.

And it was just trying to get something that engage different

people's brains in different ways.

So when I teach the level 2 training course for, for, for

BPCAI came up with a few crosswords.

I'd give them out at the end of the day.

And I said, look, if you like doing a crossword, here's a

crossword on rodents. And it was, you know, just

focusing them in on some of the things they needed to know.

And then one day I thought, actually, I travel a lot for

work. I'm always on a train, a plane,

a car or something. And I started keeping a book and

I kept this book for about 18 months full of all of my little

crossword questions and things like that in it.

And I have an excellent person who works with me, a gentleman

called Paul Condritz, who's absolutely amazing at all my, IT

does all my e-learning that kind of stuff.

He helped put it together. And then I have another

fantastic person who works for me, a lady called Anna Mullins,

who I'm sure you know, she came along and she did her magic

marketing, brought it all together.

And the only thing I disliked her for is she made us put the

word volume one on the front of it.

When is the next? One for me.

I've got to grow some hair back to lose it again doing that.

But there is one I'm incredibly, I'm an entomologist and insects,

I think. So the next one that I've got in

my, it's starting to be developed at the moment.

It's going to be very much geared towards insect

identification and helping people to improve those skills

which. Is.

I think the insect cards are great as well.

Yeah, again, Paul, Paul, Paul Conduits was was amazing support

on that. He he, he helped me through

those. We've got another set that have

just come out which have got birds and mammals and poo on it.

Have to have a look and get. I haven't got any car.

I've just got the book at the minute.

But I'm, I'm doing a diploma. Well, I've got to start doing,

I'm doing entomology A diploma online.

I am. Wow.

Fantastic. Yeah. 100 and 5000 and 50 hours.

It's going to be there's no time limit on it though, but I I want

to try and get better at insect identification.

Yeah, I can generally tell you what you know the normal ones

are, but I'd love to go yes, by looking at it.

It's this exactly. I would love to do that.

And, and you'll be more than welcome.

We do, we do practical insect control, insect identification

courses. It's something that I'm really

passionate about. And it was, it was funny.

I was with a company recently and one of the chap said, oh, we

found this insect. What is it?

It turned out to be a biscuit beetle.

He did the right thing by getting it identified.

That process took a week. So it meant that his treatment

was a week behind and he'd been able to go there with the skills

of saying that is a biscuit beetle a week ahead.

And I think, I think that that that's really important.

Making sure we get these IDs correct is, is great.

And there are some, there are some, some workarounds that we

can use to do that. Understanding insects.

You know, I've studied insects all my life.

You know, I've got a master's degree in entomology.

I know absolutely nothing about insects, but the key thing is,

is to be keen, be fascinating and accept.

Me Is that PhD not a P? HD the one below below a PhD.

Just below a PhD, it's a master. Jeffrey All, Westgate.

That's that's the next thing on the agenda.

Hopefully my wife will never listen to this because that

that's a big step going forward. I would love to do it.

I would love to do it. I mean, I don't have, I don't

have the time at the moment to to do that, but yeah, it'd be a

very good thing to do. But yeah, getting your ID skills

up, just learning about insects and just giving customers

confidence. You know, when you turn up at

their house and you say, look, this is AI don't know, this is a

flower beetle. So when we're looking for where

the flower beetle is breeding, we're looking at these types of

habitats as opposed to these types of habitats.

It gives customers confidence. Confidence.

That's what they want. A lot of the time in pest

control. A lot of people I find need

reassuring. They want someone to go.

It's OK. I understand this issue.

I've dealt with it before. You're in safe hands.

Let's work as a team. Let's get this done right.

Let's. Go, I'm quite good at that.

When when I can say customers petrified, I am quite good with

them. I am.

Yeah, because it's a big skill. It's a big skill that's needed.

I've learned that I can generally sense it because

they're all panicky and they're like, oh, like be OK, They're in

your loft. They're not in your house, but

they are when you have, but they're in your loft.

But I have learned how to. You can tell usually, and that

sometimes they ring you 400 times a week as well to tell

you. But you've got to try and

reassure them you have. Yeah, in a while.

But they you generally try and reassure them as I've done this

a lot, I know what I'm doing. Yeah, with insects, you can.

You don't have to know everything.

You know, I often say to people, I say, you know, one of the best

things to say if you don't know what something is, is to say

something like, you know, there's 24 to 26,000 species of

insects in this country. If you're expecting me to guess

what it is, you're wrong. What I'm going to do is I'm

going to take this away, look at it under a microscope, get the

ID right. Then I can give you a treatment

plan. That's a brilliant answer.

That's exactly the answer that a professional would, would,

would, would give. You know, at that point, you,

you take your insect back into the van and start sobbing into

the crook of your arm because you ain't got a clue what it is.

But that's something you do in private, not in front of the

customer. And there's loads of people that

can help with insect IDs throughout.

You know, most of the distributors will offer some

kind of service to ID things. There's loads of support on

different groups. And things you're after that

you're after an ID thing in your company.

Yeah, we we do. We offer a paid service to to

the food industry. But you know, my, my phone is

littered with pictures that come through every, every day.

Every single day I get an insect ID from someone and I, I'm happy

to, to, to have a look at things.

There's some things that you can go.

That's one of those. It's quite straightforward most

of the time. And the biggest tip for anyone

is think about the pictures that you're taking.

Because most of the time today it was a of an Ant.

And in order to start identifying this particular Ant,

I needed to look at the hairs on its antenna and I could just

about tell it was an Ant from the picture.

So it's having good high quality pictures, preferably samples.

Is is the way to go so? One thing I've got all one thing

that gets me is not, not to slag the public off.

But they everyone loves bees, don't they?

You know, I'm going to say, don't you?

I've got a wasp nest. They're swarming.

And these are honey bees swarm on their house.

Yeah, we are, because when someone says the word chimney,

it's like they're honey bees. But yeah, they did that.

Everyone says, I'll tell you, I blame Disney, Winnie the Pooh,

because they make that. They make that be bright yellow

like a wolf, and that's what people think they are.

I'll just tell the end of people send me a photograph.

Send me because the stuff they're saying is not hard

enough. Send us a photograph.

And I've messaged them about that's a honey bee.

That's a honey bee. We got, we got to the point

where we would charge a call out fee.

So particularly early on in the year, you know, he took in

April, May, early on June. People have found I've got a

wasp nest. It's like, no, no, you haven't.

What you've got is bees, masonry bees, voluntary bees, honey

bees, hover flies, something like that.

No, no, they're definitely Wasps.

OK, fine. Pay me the call out fee.

It's a non refundable call out fee.

It wasn't a huge amount, but it it made the customer, you know,

it was almost like, I bet you they're not, but we've.

Changed. We've changed something recently

where we say to the customer if you, if you if you tell us that

it's a wasp nest and you've made the mistake and you because

we're quite happy for you to send it to photograph for free.

But if we turn up and they are honey bees, you're still getting

charged and we're leaving without doing anything because

other many we're quite busy. We are.

Absolutely. And, and it's a skill, it's a

service, isn't it, You know? It's we don't cheat, then we'll

send us a photograph. We don't charge them for that.

We don't. But so I can't, I can't do that.

And then you get there. And so you say I've recently

implemented. So it's because, you know, but

it's a part of learning though, isn't it?

It is. Definitely.

And that's what we're here for. You know why?

Why would we? You know, if if someone opened

the bonnet of a car and said to me, point to the carburettor,

it's not my thing, I wouldn't have a clue.

I'd be like, it's that one, I guess.

I don't know, You know, it's just not my thing.

I would rather pay someone some money, come and do what needs to

be done because I value that service.

And at the end of the day, identification is, you know, is

a valuable service you know as well.

Exactly it is. Do you, do you enjoy being part

of the trade body, the BPCA on the board?

Is it something you really enjoy?

Yeah, yeah. Where has he gone?

He's gone. He's back.

Hang on, hang on. There we go.

He didn't really want to talk about that.

He's all right. I'm gone.

That was it. No, there's so much into it.

No, I, I, I, I really enjoy it. I enjoy it.

You know, I'm very passionate about this industry.

I I I love the industry. I'm.

Keen. I'm very keen for people to come

in to see this as a viable job and that's one of the things

we're looking at with the academic working group is to

liaise with universities so that people leaving university who

maybe have studied zoology, entomology, animal behaviour can

see our industry as a viable industry.

Make a career out of like I have, like you have, like many

others have done, and get a lot of value out of it.

You know, I love the fact that I use science everyday.

I love the fact that I'm talking about pheromones, I'm talking

about insect identification, I'm talking about behaviours, I'm

talking about resistance, I'm talking about chemistry, I'm

talking about all these different things.

And the bit I love is about taking those concepts and

putting them into understandable terms.

So I love the work I do there. I love being involved in the

discussions. I love seeing the passion and

I'm sure it's exactly the same on the end PTA board.

Well, I'm, I'm more, I'm new, see, I'm, I'm, I'm new to this,

this world. I, I only pay a board member

this year, but I've learned a lot because I'm obviously I'm a

part of the Pestech committee and I've learnt, I'm learning a

lot. I'm learning all the time.

I've learned that certain things I can't, I shouldn't say online.

I've learned my lesson there, I said.

But in general, I say what what I like usually.

But you've got to be a bit politically correct as well.

But I haven't learnt a lot. It's all about learning.

I've learnt so much. I have, yeah.

And I think, you know, it's, it's easy and it's easy to sit

back and, you know, for those who are not involved with, with,

with the trade association to kind of think, well, what's

what's going on behind the scenes?

And, and there's an incredible amount of work that's done, you

know, board members, committee members, people who volunteer

their time, energy and effort to try and make the industry a

better place. And it's open for for every all

members of organisations. And I was really pleased with

the new lot of people that we've just, we've just inducted onto

the board in the last month or so.

There's a lot more. One of the, one of the

challenges I I put to the board is I was saying at the BPCII

didn't feel we were quite representative enough to the

smaller companies. And now we've got a lot of

people from smaller companies. So we're hearing that voice and

it's, it's important that we hear everyone's voice.

It's important we hear the small companies, the big companies.

We, we, we hear from rural pest controllers, city centre pest

controllers, manufacturers, distributors, consultants, all

of those people. We need to have that that voice

and we need to be strong because every single tool in our toolkit

is under threat. And if we do not start really

getting people to take us seriously.

And this is what ties into the professionalism in my book.

And this is I've, I've tried to stay away from, you know, the,

you know, the, the, the changes in the academic qualifications

that are coming through in the industry.

Because for me, at the moment, it's personally, it's just I've

not got enough headspace to take all of that on.

You are a seriously busy bloke and I just think.

You know, upping our level to a Level 3, level 4, whatever it

may be, will help us have our voice heard.

At the moment we are, you know, our voice is not, is not strong

enough as an industry, you know, and that I was very pleased

with. I don't know if you saw the BBA

got a new chief executive. Yeah, very strong background in,

in, in the, in Parliament. She's got lots of connections.

She's got lots of, she's done lots of lobbying work in the

past. And I think that will be be

really good for the sector, for everyone in the sector, whether

whether it's about glue boards or insecticides or, or, or, or

just get in there. The pest control voice heard.

And I think I like the fact that I'm part of it.

I like the fact that I'm having an influence.

I like the fact that, you know, I can air what I believe is

right. And, and generally I, I, I don't

think there'd be many that would disagree with wanting to be more

professional. I, I don't, I don't see how

people would not want to do that.

And I, I like the fact that I'm sitting there, I'm helping to

make decisions, I'm influencing things in a positive way and,

and trying to make the industry better.

And, you know, I've had a great time in the industry.

I'm not planning on going anywhere soon, but you know,

I've, I've taken out of the industry a lot.

It's given me a lot. And I'm fortunate enough to be

in a position where I do have some time that I can dedicate

it. It's, it's a big commitment.

You know, it's sort of, you know, going on board meetings

every, you know, couple of months and travelling up to

Derby and, you know, online meetings and, you know, helping

out with this and helping out with that.

And it's, you know, it's, it's, but I enjoy it, you know?

It's good. It's like like me, I never

thought when I seen it, I always wanted to be like some kind of

on somebody within the industry. And when I went through it, I

never thought for one minute that they would want someone

like me because I'm, I'm quite, I'm quite outspoken and I'm not

corporate. I'm not, I'm from small

business. I never thought of four minute

that I, that I would get picked, but I did.

But I told him an interview that if I don't agree with you, I'm

going to tell you how it is. I'll say it nicely, but I'll

just and they say that's exactly what we want.

Good. And that was the point I was

going to make as well. You know, there's nothing worse

than people, you know, I think people who don't have an opinion

or don't have a different viewpoint.

And I, I, I, I like the fact there's positive challenge.

You know, it's something I, I do a lot of you know, it's, it's

positive poking, I call it. And it was, I used to work with

a guy, a really good guy. His name was Colin.

And Colin introduced a thing. He was from food manufacturing

and he said in in a lot of their meetings, they appointed one

person to be the nightmare person who would disagree with

everything and try and derail everything, every discussion.

Yeah, because you suddenly had this kind of a group of people

saying, yeah, I definitely think we should change our colours to

blue. And this nightmare person would

say blue, blue's the worst colour in the world.

It's terrible. It definitely should be red.

And he was just there just to just to spice things up and get

people thinking and challenged. And, and, and that's really

important when you're when you're looking at strategy, when

you're looking at direction of travel.

I think that I think that's so important, so important.

And you know, I think, you know, we are, if we look at our

industry, I, I reckon the majority of pest controllers in

our industry or members of NPTA or BPCA, whoever you want to

look at, The vast majority of those people I think come from

small businesses. And we're talking less than 3-4

people within those, I think. And they're the people who are,

are super important to engage with, to hear their voice, to

make sure their voice is coming through and to make sure that

they are supported. Because there there are

misconceptions certainly with the BPCA that it is, it's only

for the big boys. It's it's only this and that and

there's. A lot of small companies, I know

people that are in the BPCA that are very small one man bands.

So there's also there is. And I was when, when, when I

started my business, you know, I was a member of both trade

organisations, as Veritas is, Veritas is a member of BPCA and,

and MPTA. You know, I think, I think that

the, there is value in, in both organisations.

I, I kind of used to think, oh, we shouldn't have two

organisations, but it's good to have people looking at things

through different perspectives and they're challenging

different ideas and, you know, and, and, and going forward and

giving people choice so that it's not, you know, it's not one

organisation straight down the line.

And you know, so long as as an industry, which it appears we

have done with this qualification framework that we,

that we on the bigger topics, we come together and we say, right,

OK, let's, let's, let's nail this, let's get this sorted

because this is, this is vital for our industry.

He's gone again, He's gone again.

He's had enough for talking. I'm joking.

He's not. He's sure he'll be back in a

second. But thanks everyone for watching

and he he's bored of talking about the board.

I've I've run out of 50 PS in the metre I've just.

But no, you are right, it's all about that.

We're trying to collaborate. I mean, I'm not that high up in

the boards. I don't know about all the

conversations, but I know that we're trying to collaborate as

an industry. I think it's I think it's the

way forward. I do trying to be more

collaborative and that just see him come back in just a minute,

he'll be back. Hang on, Adam, there we go.

There we go. But yeah, I think we should be

trying to be more collaborative. But I'm not high up.

I'm just new to all all this. I'm learning.

I am, but I put my voice across and the message gets delivered.

But we asked all the members, as all all the MPTA members and

everyone about that qualification framework and

there's people working on it now.

I'm not part of that discussion, but I was, I, I, I did put my

viewpoint across obviously in the I also in, in all

consultations. But it's going to be a thing

that's not going to be overnight.

It's going to take quite a while to do it is.

For sure, for sure. It's going to be a challenge.

It's going to be a challenge. It's the right direction to

travel, I think. It is.

It is definitely is. So I've taken enough, enough of

your time. Thanks for coming on, Paul.

It's been, it's been great, yeah.

Absolutely. Well, I mean enjoyed having a

chat. Yeah, it's been fun.

So where, where if sorry, before I do that, who would you like to

see on this podcast? And do not say Anna because

she's booked on I. Know, she said the other day.

Oh goodness me, who do I want? To see on she moved, we moved

hers back because of yours. She said we don't want to be too

close together so she we moved her date back.

I did. I can't remember what date it

is, but it's in my calendar. Who do we want to see on there?

There's this, this, there's so many people, isn't there in the

industry. It'd be, oh, goodness me, put me

on the spot there. You put me on the spot.

Well. You know, but now you don't.

You don't. You can get back to me on that.

You know, if you if you want, you can.

Yeah, I think it'd be good, you know, good to hear some voices

from, you know, sort of people who are running small companies.

I think that that's always nice to hear.

It'd be good to have people from industries that we don't hear so

much about. So maybe pest controllers that

are involved in the museum industry, for example, or zoos

or the aviation industry. I'd love to find out more about

what actually goes on in airports.

How do you manage pests in airports?

How does that work? Prisons would be a really

interesting one. What are the challenges in those

those difficult situations to manage pests?

It would be great to have from. From my point of view, it would

be great to have some some customers on.

You know, a lot of people have said that.

What? What a lot are looking for, So,

you know, tender writers, housing associations.

It'd be great to have some politicians on.

I think, I think, you know, go and ask the politicians.

Let's get some politicians on there.

Get get the lawmakers on here. I'll get some.

If I was to do that, I'll get some, I'll get have to get some

back up with some people a little bit more clever than me

as to Co post it. I would not.

At all. Not at all.

Not at all. Because the politicians are

there to represent the people and we are the people, you know

and and. Then you ask them a question.

Then they will tell you something else.

Yeah, absolutely. It's good to get, you know, to,

you know, and I think stuff like this resonates with people,

doesn't it? Podcast is a great way of, you

know, something I'm I'm new to, you know, it's not something I'm

I've ever really done, done before doing Alex's and Sean's

one and then this one. It's, you know, I think people

like like this format, don't they?

They get, they get allowed. To a lot.

A lot of people listen, and a lot of people surprisingly

listen from around the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So those are my people to people to get on.

There we go. I don't listen.

To it tell you one thing about you actually heard about

zoology, A zoologist we once had the zoologist that kept telling

us he was a zoologist. So we did the wasp nest for him

a few years ago, killed the wasp nest.

That was it. The back they've moved to the

front. No, they've not moved.

No, I'm a zoologist. I know.

So the zoology about insects. No.

So don't try and tell us. Our job boss Nest.

That was nest went dead, didn't it?

Yeah, we've just moved. No, just didn't notice it.

But he must have told us about 15 times.

He was a zoologist. And that's why I thought

everything I do by saying I know that much because it's there's a

lot lot to try and know, but. Oh, there is.

But yeah, thanks for coming on. Do you want to tell people where

they can find you and promote your business as well while

you're on? Veritas Pest Consultancy, the

world's leading pest consultancy business.

No data to support that whatsoever.

But why not the friendliest pest consultancy business going.

Let's, let's, let's use that. So yeah, we're, we're online.

Veritas Pest Consultancy, if people need any help then drop

us a line. We've got a fantastic team of

people. You know Anna who we've spoken

about, Paul Condrets and and Sam, Sam Dumsday is an

absolutely fantastic field biologist and trainer doing a

lot of work at the moment. He's the, the younger, better

looking, more energetic version of of myself, putting me to

shame as well with some of the stuff he's doing.

So, yeah, I'm, I'm very lucky that we have a, a, a great team,

really, really good team of people that, that we can help.

You know, we, we do work in the UK and overseas and all over the

place and always, always happy to help out where we can.

And if you've got an insect that you want help with identifying,

send me a picture. More than happy to help out.

It may take me, sometimes it takes me a few days to get

through things because you know, sometimes we're, we're quite

busy doing stuff. But always happy to help out

where I can. Always happy to give advice if

you've got any questions, particularly in food

manufacturing. If you've got any questions,

always, always want me or me or one of the team happy to help

out. Yeah.

No, no, thanks for that. That's quite helpful for big.

But I will put the just website link etcetera in in the bio as

well. Yeah, thank you.

So, yeah, thanks for coming on and I'll let you get on because

my phone's now down to 6% battery.

So let's go before it dies completely.

So hopefully my next podcast, the PC look the player, I think

he keeps coming up with a status break error on the browser.

So I don't know what it is, but the phone worked out more.

We've got there, we've got there, right?

Thanks. See.

You soon I'll. Speak to you soon.

Thanks everyone. Thanks.

Bye. Bye.

Bye. There we go.

Tonight's Episode