UK vermin hotspots revealed: Do you live in Britain's rat capital?

It could be something of an urban myth to claim London is the rat capital of the UK, as data collected by the British Pest Control Association (BPCA) instead awards the unenvious title to Bridgend.

The Welsh town's local authorities racked up 2,849 rat-related call-outs between 2015 and 2016, a rate of almost 21 per 1,000 people. The figure was released in response to a freedom of information request sent by the BPCA to local authorities across the UK. Of the 390 authorities contacted, 364 replied with data about their dealings with vermin.

But while rats are most popular in Bridgend, Londoners haven't got away too easily. Tower Hamlets, in the east of the capital, is home to the most bedbug-related call-outs, at 796 incidents, and Hackney in north London topped the charts when it came to cockroaches, at 565.

According to the data received from local authorities, published by the Sunday Times, Liverpool was home to the most call-outs for problems with mice, totaling 3,988 incidents over the two-year period. Stockport in Greater Manchester traded the iconic Manchester worker bee for wasps, racking up 1,949 call-outs.

South Tyneside endured the most ant call-outs at 954, and for Angus in eastern Scotland it was birds, with 448.

The location with the most vermin call-outs of any kind was Neath and Port Talbot, close to Bridgend in southern Wales, which reported 4,184 incidents, or almost 30 for every 1,000 residents.

Bridgend council explained that its position at the top of the rat call-out table was "not representative of local rat numbers," it told the Sunday Times, explaining: "If 10 people contact us about a single incident our system records it as 10 calls."