Bedbugs in a Flat Share: Getting Everyone Ready: Southwark

In a flat share, bedbugs are usually found by one person first. That person tends to be the one who books the treatment, does the research and ends up chasing everybody else. It is worth sharing that load early, because the jobs that go wrong in shared flats almost always go wrong on the preparation rather than the treatment.

Why One Room Is Rarely the Whole Job

Bedbugs are found where someone sleeps, but they travel on clothes and bags, and housemates share a hallway, a sofa and each other's rooms. By the time one person has bites, it is common for a neighbouring bedroom to have a few as well, even if that housemate has noticed nothing. Some people simply do not react to the bites.

That is why we ask about every bedroom when you ring, not just the one with the problem. If nobody is sure, an inspection of each room settles it before the flat pays for more treatment than it needs.

Splitting the Preparation

Each person is responsible for their own room. The shared spaces need an owner too, or nobody does them. A simple split that works:

1. Each housemate strips and hot-washes their own bedding and bags it sealed.
2. Each housemate clears their own floor, including under the bed.
3. One person takes the living room: sofa cushions, throws, anything left on the floor.
4. One person takes the hallway: coats, bags and shoes off the floor and bagged.
5. Everyone agrees where the bagged things go and does not open them until we say so.

For heat treatment, add the heat-sensitive list to every room: aerosols, candles, medication, vinyl, some electronics and plants come out first. Our guide on how much to clear goes through the detail room by room.

The Room Nobody Wants to Clear

There is often one. The housemate who is away, the one who works nights, or the one who says there is nothing in their room and they are not bagging everything they own for no reason.

It helps to be clear about what is actually being asked. Nobody has to empty their room. Furniture stays where it is. What we need is the floor clear enough to reach the skirting, the bed stripped, and the space under the bed empty. For most rooms that is an hour's work, not a weekend.

If a room really cannot be got ready, tell us before the day. Treating around an unready room is possible, but it leaves the rest of the flat exposed to it, and we would rather rearrange than do a treatment we expect to fail.

Paying for It

Whether the landlord, the tenants or a mix of both pays depends on the tenancy and on how the bedbugs came in, which is often impossible to prove. We are pest controllers, not legal advisers. What we would say is this: report it to the landlord or agent in writing as soon as you know, and do not let an argument over who pays delay the treatment for weeks, because the job gets bigger while you wait.

If the property is let room by room as a house in multiple occupation, the landlord's side of it is set out on our HMO page.

On the Day and Afterwards

Nobody needs to be home for the whole of it, but someone needs to let us in and someone needs to know what we said at the end. Chemical treatment takes an hour or two a visit and you can use the rooms once they are dry; heat takes most of a day and the rooms come back once cooled. Pets go out either way.

After chemical treatment, the whole flat has to hold off vacuuming the treated edges and keep the beds where they are until the follow-up. One housemate who moves their bed against the wall or sleeps on the sofa can undo that. More on the weeks after is on what happens after treatment.

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