Bedbug Control Rotherhithe

Tell the Landlord or Agent, in Writing

Send an email or a message to your landlord or letting agent as soon as you are fairly sure. Say what you found, where, and when you first noticed. Photographs of the mattress seam or the bugs themselves help. Writing gives both of you a clear record of when the problem was raised.

Who arranges and pays for treatment depends on your tenancy agreement and on how the bedbugs arrived, and that can take some working out. We are pest controllers, not legal advisers, so we cannot settle that for you. What we can do is treat the flat. We can also talk to whichever of you is arranging it.

The Landlord’s Furniture Stays Put

The instinct is to get the infested mattress or sofa out of the flat. Please do not, unless we have advised it. It is not yours to dispose of, and carrying it through the hallway, the lift and the stairwell spreads bedbugs to the rest of the building. A mattress, a frame and a sofa can nearly always be treated where they stand.

• Leave the bed and the sofa where they are
• Do not buy a new mattress to put on the old frame; the frame will reinfest it
• Do not start sleeping somewhere else in the flat, which usually spreads them
• Keep your own things off the floor around the bed

Heat or Chemical in Someone Else’s Flat

Both routes work on rented furniture. A chemical treatment puts a residual insecticide into the seams, frames and skirtings over two or three visits. Heat treats the whole room in one visit, eggs included, but anything heat will damage has to come out first. In a furnished let that list can include items that belong to the landlord. Examples are a vinyl-covered chair or electronics supplied with the flat. So whoever owns them should know before the day.

In a block of flats, heat leaves nothing behind. If there is any chance the bedbugs came from a neighbour, we may add a light residual along the edges. Our guide on neighbours with bedbugs covers the building side.

Your Part of the Preparation

Whoever pays, the tenant usually does the preparation. That means stripping and hot-washing the bedding, bagging clothes from around the bed, and clearing the floor so we can reach the skirting and the base of the furniture. If you share the flat, getting everyone ready helps split it fairly.

For shared blocks elsewhere in Southwark, including converted riverside buildings like many in Rotherhithe, our Southwark page has more on treating one flat in a building.

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