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Essex railway station rats putting off passengers
05/01/2012
Passengers are being put off using an Essex railway station due to the frequency with which rats and other vermin are being spotted at the site.
Users of Wickford railway station have said that the regularly seen handfuls of rats running across the train tracks, and then moving on the platforms and out in to the car park and road outside.
Local insurance executive, Paul Redmond, told the Echo newspaper that he frequently sees groups of rats at the station while he is commuting to work in London and he is becoming increasingly concerned about the threat to human health.
"My wife doesn't like coming to the station because she's really scared of them," he told the paper. "Ten minutes don't pass without you seeing one and it scares people off. I've seen some huge ones, as big as guinea pigs, scuttling by."
He said there is a lot of rubbish lying around the area, which only exacerbates the problem.
Taxi driver, Mark Everitt, said that he has complained to the station's operators about it several times throughout the years he has spent dropping off and picking up people from there, but it doesn't seem to go away.
National Express East Anglia, which holds responsibility for the upkeep of the station, has been notified of the latest surge in vermin.
