Bedbug Control Bank

The First Hour

1. Keep the bug. Catch it with sticky tape or put it in a sealed bag or small pot. A squashed smear on a tissue is much harder to identify.
2. Note exactly where it was. Which desk, which chair, what time, and who had been sitting there.
3. Leave the furniture in place. Do not carry the chair to another floor or out to a skip.
4. Tell the facilities or office manager, quietly. They decide what happens next. An all-staff email at this stage causes more trouble than it solves.

What One Bug Usually Means

An office has no beds and nobody sleeps there, so bedbugs rarely settle in the way they do at home. A single bug on a chair most often arrived on someone's clothing or bag that morning. It does not mean the building is infested, and it does not mean the person who brought it in has done anything wrong.

It does mean someone may have them at home, and that upholstered chairs, sofas in breakout areas and coat stands deserve a look. Our London guide on whether bedbugs spread through offices explains how far they tend to get.

Confirm It Before Anything Else

Plenty of small brown insects turn up in offices, and carpet beetles in particular are often mistaken for bedbugs. Before telling staff, closing an area or booking treatment, find out what it is. An inspection of the affected area and the seating around it starts from £120. The City of London inspections page sets out what a business gets from one.

If it is confirmed, the inspection also tells a Bank office how far it goes: one chair, one bank of desks, or a pattern across a floor. That is what the treatment plan is built on.

If Treatment Is Needed

Office treatment near Bank can usually be done out of hours so desks are back in use when people arrive. For fabric chairs and soft seating, chemical treatment of seams and joints is common; where soft furnishings are heavily affected, heat may be worth considering. The commercial page for the City of London covers the out-of-hours side. Treatments start from £220, quoted by the area involved.

Deal with the member of staff kindly. Point them to advice on checking their own home, and to the guide on coats and cloakrooms if coats are stored together.

Afterwards, keep watching the same spot for a few weeks. A second find on the same chair points to something settled in the furniture; a find on a different floor points to another person carrying them in. Keep a note of both, with dates, so a business in Bank can tell the two situations apart and respond to each properly rather than repeating the first-day scramble.

← Bedbug Control City of London · Bedbug Control London