Aye, class - it's inner city areas you get them.

The council does it because the council is also the biggest landlord, and realistically if you've got roaches, you're on a council estate or near one. You might be a private tenant because of people buying their council houses and then renting them, but if you have roaches then your neighbours will get them, and they have to do council tenants for free so they may as well get you to pay for it. Manchester has quite a lot of poverty and is pretty socialist, so council services are quite cheap. I gather that in other cities the council services are more expensive. Oh! In fact it's gone up. It's twenty quid now. Not that that is relevant. I've got lost in pedantry. *clambers out*