Government badger control costs 2023
Updated 16 October 2024
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1. Background
On 7 September 2023, Natural England authorised licence holders to resume operations in 29 existing intensive badger control areas. Natural England did not issue any new intensive cull licences in 2023.
2. Badger control costs
Information on costs to government in 2014 to 2023 is provided in Table 1 below.
| Badger control costs | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing and compliance monitoring | 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 | 拢1,200,000 |
| 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 | 拢296,000 |
| Efficacy monitoring | 拢17,000 | 拢0 | 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 | 拢59,000 |
| 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 | 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 | 拢1,556,000 |
3. Badger control policing costs funded by Defra
The total cost for policing in 2023 across all participating forces was 拢2,587,000.
Policing costs are also published by individual forces.