Train drivers are refusing to board infested trains. Guardian staff are working from home after an eight-month outbreak. Pest control firms are inundated with calls from Islington and Croydon. Just how bad is London’s bed bug problem?
The Times reported this week that we are at ‘peak bed bug’, with cases rising up to 25 per cent a year. The quote comes from Valpas, a firm that sells bed bug prevention and monitoring services to hotels. (Its research says bed bug safety is the latest in a line of unmet ‘guest needs’, following non-smoking rooms in the 1990s, WiFi in the 2000s and sustainability in the 2010s.) Similarly, J. G. Pest Control says callouts were 25 per cent higher this summer than last year. In Islington’s N1 postcode there were 45 callouts over the last year, and 40 in Croydon’s CR0. Rentokil says there was a 44 per cent-a-year increase between 2023 and 2025. Nightshift Pest Control has seen a 50 per cent increase this year.
Figures from councils tend to be more out-of-date, but point the same way. Freedom of information requests by Direct Line showed a 35 per cent increase in callouts across the country between 2022 and 2024, from 11,028 to 14,882 – but most of that increase happened between 2022 and 2023. (Infestations are related to travel and there was a massive post-pandemic rebound in that year.) The firm’s share of cover claims from landlords that are for bed bugs has risen from 10 per cent last year to 12 per cent in the first half of this year. An unnamed London borough told the Metro that it had 155 callouts in the first half of the year, half as many again as the same period in 2024.
But panic can increase the number of reports. After the scare focused on Paris in 2023, Rentokil saw a 196 per cent increase in request, but only 65 per cent of those had confirmed bed bugs. London councils saw a 3 per cent increase in council callouts between August (before the Paris infestation was widely reported) and its peak in October. Transport for London received 35 reports of bed bugs, but none were confirmed. There’s one thing most of the recent numbers have in common: they’re from firms selling treatment. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong – but increases could be driven by advertising and awareness rather than an increase in the problem.
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