Government badger control costs 2021
Updated 7 September 2023
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-government-badger-control-costs/government-badger-control-costs-2021
1. Background
On 7 September 2021, Defra published, as part of its measured approach to tackling bovine TB and achieving disease control benefits, Natural England’s authorisations to local farmers and landowners to carry out targeted badger control in the counties of:
- Wiltshire
- Shropshire
- Staffordshire
- Hampshire
- Gloucestershire
- Berkshire
- Northamptonshire
- Oxfordshire
- Herefordshire
- Worcestershire
Operations took place between 31 August and 2 November 2021.
2. Badger control costs
Information on costs to government in 2014 to 2021.
| Badger control costs | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing and compliance monitoring | £1,036,000 | £1,003,000 | £1,284,000 | £1,289,000 | £1,312,000 | £1,459,000 | £1,541,000 | £1,546,000 |
| GPS and Humaneness monitoring, including post mortems | £1,515,000 | £154,000 | £392,000 | £506,000 | £352,000 | £388,000 | £282,000 | £254,000 |
| Efficacy monitoring | £17,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Advice and assessments | £294,000 | £460,000 | £646,000 | £728,000 | £410,000 | £314,000 | £313,000 | £88,000 |
| Other costs, including equipment | £205,000 | £162,000 | £53,000 | £49,000 | £1,000 | £20,000 | £16,000 | £3,000 |
| Total cost | £3,067,000 | £1,779,000 | £2,375,000 | £2,572,000 | £2,075,000 | £2,181,000 | £2,152,000 | £1,800,000 |
3. Badger control policing costs funded by Defra
The total cost for policing in 2021 across all participating forces was of £3,589,000.
Policing costs are also published by individual forces.