Moved in yesterday and new flat has cockroaches

sabrinamve

Myself and my partner and 2 year child just yesterday moved into a new flat, paying six weeks deposit and one months rent in advance on a 12 month contract with no 6 month break clause. Firstly the flat was not cleaned (it was filthy) as I had requested prior to moving in, secondly we found a dead cockroach and poison, then in the night we found a live cockroach in the bathroom. As well as rat and mat poison under sink and what looks like rat droppings on terrace, and strange sticky dropping type things on all the walls.

It's impossible to report this to the agency at the weekend and they manage the flat. They told us all communication even emergencies have to be put in an email to them! I called the Landlord this morning and he said he knew about the cockroaches and it's been a long standing problem in the whole block! He then said I should just kill them and that I should just deal with the Letting Agents to resolve this and then hung up on me! I can't believe the landlord didn't disclose this information prior to tenancy!

We would really like to leave immediately and have all money paid to Letting Agency returned to us, is this at all possible and does this constitute as Landlord breaking tenancy terms and can we say it is not fit for human habitation according to Section 8 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 www. opsi. gov.uk /revisedstatutes/acts/ukpga/1985/cukpga_19850070_en_1#pb3-l1g9

Any advice much appreciated, am in internet cafe as have no internet at home eeek. Have not even unpacked as just want to leave. We will probably stay at friends tonight.

Sabrina

Cannon_Fodder

ring your local council's environmental health department.

sabrinamve

Thank you, I will do that first thing tomorrow morning. I will also be going to the Letting Agents first thing to see if we can resolve anything immediately.

sharkie

borax - does actually not kill them on the spot, but stops their eggs from hatching.

SUESMITH_2

isn't borax hard to get now? just wondered

sharkie

SUESMITH wrote: »

isn't borax hard to get now? just wondered

Quantities up to 25kg bags are sold on ebay. Hopefully their problem is not that large.

silverchair

You can get borax in smaller quantities from Boots.

I had the same problem when we first moved into our apartment. The problem wasnt disclosed to us either when we originally looked around. The pest control guy said they also previously had a mouse problem but they were gone. I was really angry especially as Im petrified of mice. He said that it was because a couple of people from the apartment building were evicted & had left lots of food lying around. We were very lucky that the problem didnt last long & was already under control.

I was a bit squimish & found it really hard to squish the cockroaches.

We also had that brown sticky stuff in cupboards. Not sure what it was but washed it away. We had to scrub everywhere. Pretty sure when we leave we will still have money taken out of the deposit for cleaning the apartment & steam cleaning carpets despite it being unclean when we moved in.

jozbo

I lived in a place for 6 months that had similar issues. Terrible mouse problem and cockroaches everywhere, invisible landlord and estate agency from hell.
In the end we pushed enough that the landlord got a pest killer in (I think they were from the council but wasnt free) and they put some poison around the inner corners of the floor, something that caused horrible deformations in the cockroaches when the babies hatched.
Anyway it got rid of the !!!!!!s so recommended!

preable

We had a mouse problem before and was terrified xD Just ring the local Enviroment agency.

rockitup

When I bought a house about 5 years ago we found a lot of cockroaches. We paid for a pest controller to visit and he just sprayed some chemical and put a few sticky traps down.

Found a few dead roaches after but either plenty survived or more babies hatched so the problem didn't go away.

I checked up on the net and found a couple of brands of cockroach gel which apparently cannot be purchased in UK unless you are a pest controller. I did purchase some from France via Ebay and it was quite expensive but a lot cheaper than a pest controller's call-out fee.

One of the gels brand names was Goliath but I cannot remember the other one, both worked and I still have some left but am now in the Philippines where we had to use it for the same problem here except that the cockroaches are around 2 inches long and can fly here.

This gel kills the roaches in 1 to 2 days but leave the bodies out of sight somewhere in the room as the baby roaches will eat the adult roaches and they then die too. The gel seems to be active for around 3 or 4 months.

Warning though, keep away from kids and pets just uses a tiny spot here and there where the cockroaches run like in the bathroom, under kitchen sink, along pipework, inside light sockets etc.

poppysarah

Cockroaches are hard to get rid of unless every property is treated at the same time.

I'd be worried about rat and mouse droppings too.

Ring environmental health and get them out.