Britain's bed bug hotspots shown in interactive map – check your area now
Brits can find out where are the bed bug hotspots in the UK with an interactive map after a massive surge in cases.
Thousands of households have been seeking help to deal with bed bugs so far this month and pest control firms in London say they have been ‘inundated’ with calls. The number of people in the UK using Google to search for information on bed bugs has rocketed nearly fourfold in the past month.
And a Sussex seaside town standing 40 miles from the coast of France has been identified as the worst place affected by the insects. Residents of St Leonards-on-Sea generated a higher rate of Google searches for the term ‘bed bugs’ than any area in the country in the last 90 days - amid fears that an infestation in Paris could mean the blood-sucking insects are also taking a hold here.
There has been a surge in bed bug cases (Getty Images)Google stats show that there have been around 80,000 searches in the UK for the term ‘bed bugs’ in the last 30 days which is an increase of 287% compared to the previous month. Using figures posted by Google Trends, the Mirror has identified the areas of the country where residents are most concerned that they may have been infested.
St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex faces directly towards the Normandy coast and is also geographically among the closest towns in Britain to Paris, so it is perhaps understandable why it comes top of the list with people searching for bed bug on Google.
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But Google also lists 148 other bed bug ‘hotspots’ with heightened levels of interest in the insects, and although roughly a third are in and around London and Kent, the others are spread right across the country. In the list is Havant in Hampshire, Halling in Kent, but also further north there is Lowton, near Wigan and Whickham in Tyne and Wear.
Kilbirnie, a small town in North Ayrshire, is ranked sixth in the list and the other areas ranked in the top ten ‘hotspots’ are Debenham, a village in Suffolk, Broxbourne in Herefordshire, Sheerness in Kent, and Stewartby, a village in Bedfordshire. After Kilbirnie, six other places in Scotland appear in the full list of bed bug hotspots including the Caithness town of Wick in the far north of the country. There is one hotspot in Northern Ireland and five in Wales.
Bed bug hotspots of Britain - with Google search score
St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex - 100
Havant, Hampshire - 96
Halling, Kent - 92
Lowton, Wigan - 90
Whickham, Tyne and Wear - 86
Kilbirnie, South Ayrshire - 85
Debenham, Suffolk - 80
First signs of bed bug infestation in your home as cases surge in the UK
Broxbourne, Hertfordshire - 74
Sheerness, Kent - 73
Stewartby, Bedfordshire - 70
Around London, Google detected the biggest search volumes for ‘bed bug’ information in Thornton Heath, Bexleyheath, Ilford, Waltham Abbey, Walton-on-Thames, Wembley, Edgware and Southall. Bed bug experts say there has been ‘exponential growth’ in the problem in recent years, even before fears of the infestation coming from Paris.
The reports from the French capital came as Paris Fashion Week got underway, raising concerns that the tiny insects could have been brought back by thousands of people from Britain who attend the event. David Cain, founder of pest control firm Bed Bugs Limited, said the bugs are now “out of control”. He added: “The problem is worse now than it’s been since probably the 1930s and 1940s”.
Dr Richard Naylor, director at the Bed Bug Foundation, said the problem has got worse as the insects have developed a resistance to insecticides. He said a good way of avoiding bedbugs is to keep “bags off the bed and away from the bed” when visiting hotels and hospitals.
*Google Trends ranks towns and cities using a normalised score between 0 and 100, based on the proportion of searches for ‘bed bugs’ over time compared to all other searches, rather than releasing the total number of searches for the term in each area. The tech giant says this is done to make comparisons between different sized communities more accurate.
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