Luton Borough Council’s Approach

This national bedbug problem has not missed Luton. The Pest Control Service is currently receiving an alarming number of bedbug jobs on a weekly basis.

Whilst the bedbug is not known to be a carrier of disease, the Council does recognise the bedbug as being an obnoxious pest with which to have to share a home.

Successful treatment can be a lengthy process. To ensure effective and successful treatment the Council expects complete cooperation from the homeowner.

The Pest Control Officers attending your infestation have to work within the Laws regarding pesticides and have a duty of care to you not to endanger your health by excessive use of pesticides in your house

Therefore, having identified that you have a bedbug problem at home and arranged for a visit from council Pest Control Officers you should make your home ready for the treatment.

Council Pest Control Officers are trained to Advanced Pest Management Diploma level and work within the restraints of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations and other Health and Safety guidelines. The insecticides used in your home will be used properly and safely and the Pest Control Officers will advise you on any further precautions you need to take. However, you should be aware that no insecticides are completely safe and it is for this reason that the Council expect full cooperation from you to ensure that the infestation is eradicated quickly and efficiently with the minimum use of insecticides

Please remember, it is your responsibility to ensure all preliminary requirements are met.

The Officers will require -

  • Access to all areas that need treating – which will be allbedrooms and beds and adjacent areas.
  • Beds must have been stripped and bedcovers put into sealed bin liners. We advise they are placed in the bath for storage. Pay attention to the draws often built into divan beds which must also be emptied.
  • All wardrobes, draws and bookcases to be emptied and contents placed in sealed bin liners.
  • All furniture to be pulled away from the walls for access to the back of the furniture and skirting.
  • All pictures and posters off the walls and available for inspection.
  • All bagged up items of clothing and bedding must be removed from the rooms that need treating.
  • Only bedroom furniture, beds, mattresses and curtainsare to be left in the bedrooms. All electrical appliances TV’s, computers etc. must be removed.

PEST CONTROL OFFICERS WILL NOT CARRY OUT ANY TREATMENT IF YOUR PROPERTY IS NOT COMPLETELY READY UPON THEIR ARRIVAL.

Bedbug Treatment Information Sheet.

This information sheet has been produced for your benefit to provide you with information on the pest you are experiencing and for you to prepare your property before the Pest Control Officer arrives to treat.

Please read this leaflet thoroughly and comply with the instructions.

Pest Control

Environmental Services

Luton Borough Council

Town Hall

Luton LU1 2BQ

Tel: 01582 510330

Email:

Please ensure that you leave a telephone number so that Pest Control can contact you during office hours

If you need this in large print, on tape or in

Cimex lectularius

The Bedbug

Modern insecticides developed in the late 1940s virtually eliminated the bedbug from the domestic scene in the UK. They are however back with a vengeance, the ease and frequency of foreign travel and a developed resistance to insecticides are some of the factors that are blamed for this increase, but the experts feel that there are other causes which are still not clear. Some areas of the country are experiencing up to 300% increase in reported infestations on 5 years ago.

Bedbug infestations most commonly occur as a consequence of :-

  • Bringing them home in luggage after staying in infested accommodation,
  • Visitors staying at your house who come from infested homes
  • Accepting infested second-hand furniture.
Here are some facts about the bedbug
  • Bedbugs are principally pests of humans but can take feeds from pets, birds and bats.
  • The adults are about the size and, when well fed, the same colour as an apple pip – dark red.
  • They should not be confused with the mites that most people have naturally in their beds – unpleasant though it may seem. Bed bugs are much larger.
  • They do not live on the body but hide in the mattress, skirting boards or cracks due to poor joinery in the bedroom. They are also to be found under wallpaper, the back of pictures and posters, in clock and radios beside the bed and electric fittings in the bedroom.
  • Their harbourage sites are normally fairly close to their hosts but they are capable of hunting down a feed by detecting a host’s body warmth and breath. So moving to another bedroom will only give short-term respite from the pest.
  • They emerge at night and can guzzle up to four times their body weight in quarter of an hour.
  • A female can lay about 350 small comma–shaped pale-coloured eggs in her lifetime and so a gravid female can be responsible for many thousand offspring a year.
  • Bedbugs can infest even the cleanest of homes. An infestation therefore does not indicate a dirty home.

It is important that an infestation is treated at an early stage. Infestations are more difficult to eradicate once they are established as then there are often several generations of breeding bedbugs. The first indication of an infestation is usually the itchy red bites caused by the feeding nymphs. Closer inspection might show small blood smears on the sheets or dead nymphs in the bed.

As the infestation becomes more mature, distinct blood smears will be noticeable and some people may suffer a bad reaction to the bites. At this stage faecal deposits outside cracks and joins in woodwork, around seams in wallpaper etc identify definite harbourage sites.

Faecal spotting on a mattress

Often live bedbugs can be found within the bedcovers.

There may also be an unpleasant odour associated with heavy infestations of bedbugs.

So, if visiting family abroad, putting up casual visitors, staying in budget accommodation or buying second-hand furniture is part of your lifestyle or you are semi mobile in that you stay in short term lets, student accommodation and such like, then you should have an increased awareness of this National and International problem.

* An Internet search using Google or some other search engine using “Bedbug”, “Cimex lectularius”, “Clive Boase”, will provide further information on this pest.

Z:\ECS\Environmental health\Pest Control\Information Sheets September 2012