Bedbugs on an Estate When the Neighbours Have Them Too: Southwark

Most people on an estate find out a neighbour has bedbugs in one of three ways: a conversation on the landing, a mattress left by the bins, or a letter from the landlord. None of these proves the insects in your bedroom came from next door. They may have, or they may have come in with a bag or a second-hand chair. For the treatment it matters less than people think; for the conversation with the landlord it matters more.

What We Do Differently in a Block

The treatment inside your flat is the same treatment we would do in a house. The difference is at the boundary. Where a flat shares walls, a floor and a ceiling with others, we pay particular attention to the routes a bedbug could use to come in: skirting on the party walls, the gaps where heating and water pipes pass through, and the threshold of the front door.

• With chemical treatment, the residual insecticide along those edges is doing two jobs at once — killing what is already in your flat and anything that walks in later.
• With heat treatment, the room is cleared in one visit, eggs included, but heat leaves nothing behind. In a shared building we may add a light residual at the edges so the flat is not left open to the one next door.

Telling the Landlord

On a council or housing association estate, the landlord is the only party who can arrange for several flats to be looked at together. That is why reporting it matters even if you intend to pay for your own treatment.

1. Put it in writing — an email or the landlord's repairs form, not only a phone call.
2. Say what you have found, which rooms, and when you first noticed it.
3. Say if you know or suspect that neighbours are affected, without naming anyone you are not sure about.
4. Keep a copy, and note the date and any reference number you are given.
5. If we have treated or inspected, attach our written note of what we found.

Who arranges and pays for treatment depends on the tenancy and on the cause, and landlords handle it in different ways. We are pest controllers, not legal advisers; if there is a dispute, a housing adviser is the right person to ask.

Talking to the Neighbours

People are embarrassed about bedbugs, and a neighbour who feels accused will often deny everything and do nothing. It goes better when you lead with your own flat rather than theirs: you have found them, you are getting it treated, you wanted to mention it in case they notice anything. That gives them a way in without having to admit anything on the doorstep.

If they say they already have them, the most useful thing is to find out whether anyone is dealing with it and when. Treatments in neighbouring flats that happen close together are far more effective than ones months apart.

While You Wait for the Rest of the Block

There are a few things that help and a few that make it worse.

• Do not drag a mattress or sofa out through the stairwell unless we have advised it. Wrapped or not, it sheds bugs along the way.
• Do not move to a relative's flat to sleep. It usually takes them with you.
• Do keep the bed a little way off the wall so it only touches the floor.
• Do keep bags and coats off the floor by the front door.

If spotting or live bugs turn up again after treatment, note where. Near the party wall or the front door points to re-introduction from outside the flat; in the middle of the mattress points to survivors. The fix is different, and our guide to why bedbugs reappear explains how to tell.

For the wider picture of treating flats in shared buildings across Southwark, see the borough page.

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