Government badger control costs 2022
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-2022
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’s 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 | £1,036,000 | £1,003,000 | £1,284,000 | £1,289,000 | £1,312,000 | £1,459,000 | £1,541,000 | £1,546,000 | £1,520,000 |
| GPS and Humaneness monitoring, including post mortems | £1,515,000 | £154,000 | £392,000 | £506,000 | £352,000 | £388,000 | £282,000 | £254,000 | £643,000 |
| Efficacy monitoring | £17,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Advice and assessments | £294,000 | £460,000 | £646,000 | £728,000 | £410,000 | £314,000 | £313,000 | £88,000 | £143,000 |
| Other costs, including equipment | £205,000 | £162,000 | £53,000 | £49,000 | £1,000 | £20,000 | £16,000 | £3,000 | £1,000 |
| Total cost | £3,067,000 | £1,779,000 | £2,375,000 | £2,572,000 | £2,075,000 | £2,181,000 | £2,152,000 | £1,891,000 | £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 £3,732,000.
Policing costs are also published by individual forces.