Government badger control costs 2022
Updated 16 October 2024
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1. Background
On 28 October 2022, Defra published, as part of its measured approach to tackling bovine TB and achieving disease control benefits, Natural England鈥檚 authorisations to local farmers and landowners to carry out targeted badger control in the counties of:
- Cornwall
- Devon
- Buckinghamshire
- Derbyshire
- Wiltshire
- Somerset
- Dorset
- Staffordshire
- Hampshire
- Berkshire
- Northamptonshire
- Oxfordshire
- Warwickshire
- West Midlands
- Herefordshire
- Worcestershire
2. Badger control costs
Information on costs to government in 2014 to 2022 is provided in Table 1 below.
| Badger control costs | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing and compliance monitoring | 拢1,036,000 | 拢1,003,000 | 拢1,284,000 | 拢1,289,000 | 拢1,312,000 | 拢1,459,000 | 拢1,541,000 | 拢1,542,000 | 拢1,520,000 |
| GPS and Humaneness monitoring, including post mortems | 拢1,515,000 | 拢154,000 | 拢392,000 | 拢506,000 | 拢352,000 | 拢388,000 | 拢282,000 | 拢254,000 | 拢643,000 |
| Efficacy monitoring | 拢17,000 | 拢0 | 拢0 | 拢0 | 拢0 | 拢0 | 拢0 | 拢0 | 拢0 |
| Advice and assessments | 拢294,000 | 拢460,000 | 拢646,000 | 拢728,000 | 拢410,000 | 拢314,000 | 拢313,000 | 拢88,000 | 拢143,000 |
| Other costs, including equipment | 拢205,000 | 拢162,000 | 拢53,000 | 拢49,000 | 拢1,000 | 拢20,000 | 拢16,000 | 拢3,000 | 拢1,000 |
| Total cost | 拢3,067,000 | 拢1,779,000 | 拢2,375,000 | 拢2,572,000 | 拢2,075,000 | 拢2,181,000 | 拢2,152,000 | 拢1,887,000 | 拢2,307,000 |
The 2021 total has been amended; the individual costs that make up the 2021 total remain the same.
3. Badger control policing costs funded by Defra
The total cost for policing in 2022 across all participating forces was 拢3,732,000.
Policing costs are also published by individual forces.