Grey squirrels can be controlled without a licence in most of the UK, but there is one rule that makes them legally unlike almost any other garden pest: once you have trapped one, releasing it back into the wild is a criminal offence.

Why grey squirrels are treated differently in law

The grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is not native to the UK and is listed on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which covers species it is an offence to release or allow to escape into the wild. That status was reinforced by the Invasive Non-native Species (Enforcement and Permitting) Order 2019, which implemented stricter domestic controls on invasive species following EU Regulation 1143/2014, including a bar on breeding, transporting or releasing grey squirrels. Natural England, and its counterparts in the devolved nations, no longer issue licences to release grey squirrels caught in the wild.

The legal reasoning isn’t about the grey squirrel’s welfare specifically — it’s about protecting the native red squirrel, now largely confined to parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Wight and a handful of English and Welsh strongholds. Grey squirrels outcompete red squirrels for food and habitat and carry squirrelpox virus, which is usually fatal to reds but which greys carry with limited symptoms of their own.

What “you can’t release it” actually means in practice

This is the part that catches out well-meaning homeowners: if you trap a grey squirrel — in a loft, garden or bird feeder cage trap — you cannot legally relocate it to a nearby park or release it back where it was caught. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, a trapped grey squirrel must be humanely dispatched at the point of capture. Guidance from Natural Resources Wales and equivalent bodies describes acceptable methods as cranial concussion or, where safe to do so, a licensed air rifle, applied by someone competent to do so without causing unnecessary suffering — a standard enforced separately under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996.

In practice, this means DIY cage-trapping a squirrel and then not knowing what to do with it — a common outcome — can leave someone holding a live animal they are not legally permitted to release and may not be competent, equipped or willing to dispatch. This is one of the more common reasons homeowners hand squirrel problems to a professional rather than attempt DIY trapping.

Legal control methods

Where control is justified, accepted methods under the general licensing framework include cage trapping followed by dispatch, spring traps designed and used in accordance with their approval conditions (used inside a covered tunnel to exclude non-target species), and shooting by a competent, appropriately licensed person. None of these require an individual licence application in most circumstances — the general licensing framework covers routine control — but all require the person carrying it out to be competent and to avoid unnecessary suffering, and none permit release of anything caught.

Red squirrel areas and differences across the UK

Squirrel licensing is a devolved matter, administered by Natural England, NatureScot, Natural Resources Wales and Northern Ireland’s DAERA respectively, and the practical rules can differ slightly by nation and by whether a property sits inside a red squirrel conservation area. Natural Resources Wales, for example, requires that only live (cage) traps are used in areas where red squirrels are present, specifically to avoid the risk of a spring trap catching a red squirrel by mistake, and that anyone trapping obtains permission from the landowner before doing so. If your property is in or near a known red squirrel stronghold — parts of Scotland, Northumberland, the Lake District, Anglesey, the Isle of Wight and a few other pockets — it is worth checking locally which control methods are currently permitted before doing anything yourself, since misidentifying a red squirrel as grey is itself an offence against a fully protected species.

DIY control or a professional?

Squirrels in a loft are common enough that many general pest controllers offer trapping as a standard service, and doing so removes the dispatch question from the homeowner entirely. If you’d rather understand what you’re hearing before assuming it’s a squirrel at all, our guide to noises in the loft covers how to distinguish squirrels from rats, mice and genuinely protected wildlife such as bats, which must never be disturbed or excluded without contacting the relevant statutory nature conservation body first.

Sources and further reading

• Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, Schedule 9 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Natural Resources Wales — Red and grey squirrel licensing
• GOV.UK — Grey squirrel control and management funding guidance (CWS3)

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