Licensing in WA. None of our other pest control pages covers Western Australia, so here are the rules in brief. Pest management sits under the Health (Pesticides) Regulations 2011 (opens in a new tab), administered by the Department of Health. A business must be registered before it provides services; the registration lasts 12 months, its certificate has to be displayed where people entering the premises can see it, and the record of each treatment is kept for three years. Technicians hold a pest management technician licence carrying the endorsements described above. New entrants to domestic pest, termite or fumigation work train on a provisional licence: for the first 30 working days the department requires direct, shoulder-to-shoulder supervision by a technician with the same endorsements, and a provisional holder can't run their own business. Technicians licensed in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT or the Northern Territory can work in WA temporarily under automatic mutual recognition (opens in a new tab) once they've notified the department and received a Notice of Automatic Deemed Registration. Queensland isn't on that list, and visiting technicians still have to work for a registered business. HealthyWA (opens in a new tab) tells anyone unsure about a business or technician to call the department, and splits complaints between the department (unregistered, unlicensed or unsafe work) and Consumer Protection (payment disputes, overcharging and unfinished jobs).
European house borer. This beetle is a declared pest that bores into seasoned softwood, pine above all, and DPIRD (opens in a new tab) says it is known in parts of the metropolitan area as well as regional WA. Where it has been found, a Restricted Movement Zone controls how pinewood is moved, stored and disposed of, and DPIRD's online map lets anyone check an address. The City of Gosnells tells residents there are several zones inside its boundaries, and points out that, because the beetle flies in, most soil treatments and physical barriers prove ineffective against it. Adults are on the wing from September to April. DPIRD lists the signs as oval exit holes 3 to 10 mm long running with the grain, frass below them and sometimes a soft scraping sound from larvae, which can live inside timber for two to five years in WA conditions. Suspected borer goes to the MyPestGuide Reporter app or DPIRD's Pest and Disease Information Service. The building side, including treated pine in the zones, is on our Perth carpenters page.
European wasps. DPIRD has kept European wasps (opens in a new tab) from establishing a permanent population in WA since 1977, and its instruction for a suspected nest is to report it, not treat it. The campaign that closed in June 2026 (opens in a new tab) found and destroyed 73 nests across 14 local government areas. Albany had 37, and Perth councils accounted for 34 of the rest: Canning (9), Cockburn (6), Gosnells (6), Swan (4), Belmont and Bayswater (2 each), and one each in Melville, Wanneroo, Kalamunda, Victoria Park and Mundaring. DPIRD says the wasps are easiest to spot from December to May. A summer notice on your wasp page, linking to DPIRD's reporting page and naming the wasps you do treat, is worth switching on every year, and it takes one email to us.
Buyers, renters and new homes. Consumer Protection (opens in a new tab) says there is no mandatory cooling-off period for real estate contracts in WA, and suggests that buyers of an established home get a timber pest inspection report from a pest controller or a building inspection company. It describes a common special condition: if timber pests have caused or could cause damage, the seller pays for treatment and repairs by a set date, and the buyer can seek to withdraw if that date passes. For newer houses, the City of Gosnells reminds owners that every new dwelling must include a termite barrier, that a durable notice describing it is fixed to the building, and that some methods need maintenance or renewal to keep working, which is the case for an annual inspection page. On rentals, the Commissioner's guidelines on pet requests list a reasonable condition about fumigation among those a landlord can set without applying for approval. Our Perth real estate page covers the wider sales and rental rules that agents work under.
Food premises, mosquitoes and snakes. The WA Health list of Food Act offenders (opens in a new tab) keeps each conviction for 24 months and links to the charges. In 2026 at least six Perth convictions, brought by the Cities of Belmont, Bayswater and Canning, included failures to take all practicable measures against pests under clause 24 of Standard 3.2.2. Mosquitoes are partly a council job: the City of Canning (opens in a new tab) works with Melville, South Perth, Perth, Nedlands and the Department of Health on saltmarsh mosquitoes breeding along the Canning River, records low numbers of Ross River virus in its district each year, and asks residents to tip out water-holding containers and fit insect screens. Snake calls can come your way too. Canning says the Wildcare Helpline no longer runs volunteer call-outs to relocate reptiles and suggests a pest control service or a snake catcher instead, and the City of Joondalup notes that dugites and tiger snakes become more active in early spring.
Your service area, and how we work. Perth customers search by suburb and by council, and they tend to think in regions: north of the river, south of the river, the eastern suburbs and the hills. A service-area section grouped that way, naming the councils in each, reads naturally here, and a short borer note on the areas that have zones shows you know the ground. We're an Adelaide team based on Hutt St and work with Perth businesses by phone and email. Adelaide runs two and a half hours ahead of Perth while South Australia is on daylight saving and an hour and a half ahead the rest of the year, and we reply within 24 hours. We haven't built for a pest controller or a WA business yet; our current clients are in SA, NSW, VIC and QLD.