Telling a New Tenant or Lodger About Past Bedbugs: Hillingdon

This guide is for anyone letting a room or a home after a bedbug treatment: a landlord with a flat, or a homeowner taking in a lodger. We are pest controllers, not legal advisers. What you are required to disclose depends on the arrangement and the law, so take proper advice on that. What follows is the practical side.

The Records Worth Keeping

The most useful thing you can hand a new occupant is a clear account of what happened and what was done about it. Keep, in one place:

• When the bedbugs were found, and in which room or rooms.
• Who carried out the treatment, the dates of each visit, and whether it was heat or chemical.
• What the technician wrote up or told you after the last visit.
• Anything you did between visits, such as hot-washing or replacing bedding.
• Any later inspection, with its date and what it found.

Dates matter most. A chemical course is usually two or three visits about 10 to 14 days apart, and a record showing the full course was completed says more than “it was treated”. After heat, the date of the single visit and any follow-up check does the same job. Our London guide on what happens after bedbug treatment explains the weeks that follow.

What to Say

Keep it short and factual. Something like: the back bedroom had bedbugs last spring; it had a full course of treatment; there have been no signs since and a check before you moved in found none; here are the dates. That tells a sensible person what they need without making it sound bigger than it was.

Say it before they move in, not after. Give them the chance to ask questions and to look at the room. Tell them what to do if they ever see anything: report it to you in writing straight away, keep sleeping in their own bed, and not to reach for a shop spray.

Why Honesty Matters

The practical reason is that a problem found early is small. A tenant who knows the history will mention spotting on a seam the week they see it. One who was told nothing may say nothing for months, or treat it themselves and scatter it through the building.

The other reason is trust. If signs do turn up, the first question anyone asks is whether you knew. Having told them, with the records to show it, keeps that conversation about solving the problem rather than about blame. Who then arranges and pays for treatment depends on the tenancy and on how the bedbugs arrived.

A Check Before Someone Moves In

If the treatment was a while ago, or the room has stood empty, an inspection from £120 before the new person moves in gives you something recent to show them. An empty room is also the easiest one to look at properly.

For a live-in landlord sharing the house with a lodger, the Uxbridge page covers treatment when you both live under one roof. The Hillingdon page covers the treatment routes.

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