A PLAGUE of 10-inch rats is terrorising a riverside housing estate, as a result of a deliberate policy designed to encourage the animals to breed.

Reeds bordering the River Cray have not been cut by the Environment Agency for nearly a year and the three-foot high plants provide the perfect home for rodents.

Now the bloated creatures are scampering around Wolsley Close residents' gardens and even inside their homes in search of food.

Theresa Gray was alerted to the hygiene threat by one of her five young children who had been playing outside when he found a dead rat in the garden.

The twenty-nine-year-old mum said: "My five-year-old came inside and said he had found a mouse outside in the garden.

"But it wasn't a mouse, it was a rat and it was disgusting."

Ms Gray and her neighbours are furious, and say they are the victims of a deliberate policy to encourage riverside flora and fauna.

"They say they are trying to encourage flora and fauna," she said. "But this kind of fauna I'd rather not have thank you."

A spokesman for the government's Environment Agency explained that it only cuts the reeds once a year, after wildlife living in the river have successfully bred.

She said: "We cut plants growing in the river from August to October.

"We cannot cut the reeds while the animals are raising their young."

Stanley Lock, 66, has lived by the river for 20 years and has experienced periodic surges in the rat menace.

He said: "The longer the grass is the more rats there are. When the grass is cut we do not get them. We need to get the grass cut."