Family 'isolated' by 16-month bedbug infestation

A family says they have been left "isolated" by a bedbug infestation that has plagued their home for 16 months.

Stephen Long, from Coleford, Gloucestershire, has called on housing association Stonewater, which owns the property, to eradicate the insects.

Long says he, his partner, and his step-daughter - all of whom are disabled - have been forced to sleep in the living room and have become "increasingly isolated" due to concerns about spreading the bugs to other people's homes.

A spokesperson for Stonewater said the association had arranged and paid for extensive treatments to tackle the problem, as well as replacing bedding and furniture, but could not fund further help.

Long has multiple health conditions including arthritis, scoliosis, fibromyalgia and chronic pain, while his partner Jen Brown has arthritis, fibromyalgia, asthma and high blood pressure. The couple's step-daughter is also registered disabled.

Brown, 46, said the family became aware of the problem in April 2025, when she found what she thought was a beetle, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

She said: "I found another one a couple of days later and thought, 'what is it?' I took a picture of it and put it in the old Google lens and it came up as a bed bug.

"Pest control reckon we had them for a long time before we realised."

Long, 47, said he has a major phobia of bed bugs and the couple and their 20-year-old step-daughter are all sleeping downstairs because they "cannot safely or confidently use the bedrooms".

"I'm sleeping on a two seater sofa and I'm six foot tall," he said.

"They [Stonewater] have helped but you don't just stop when you can't work out why you can't get rid of [the bed bugs].

"It just seems like it's never going to end. It's unbelievable."

Long said the infestation had cut the family off from their support network.

"Neither Jen nor I work, our shopping is delivered and we now rarely leave the house because we are frightened of transferring bed bugs elsewhere," he said.

"We cannot safely visit the people who support us because of the risk of taking bedbugs into their homes, and they do not come into ours because of the same risk.

"This has left an already disabled household increasingly isolated."

A Stonewater spokesperson said "considerable effort" had been put into resolving the issue, including funding several treatments and specialist inspections.

"Our pest management policy makes it clear that bed bugs in an individual home are normally the customer's responsibility," they said.

"However, we know that some customers may need additional help and, over the course of more than a year, we worked closely with Mr Long in an effort to resolve the infestation."

"We want to be clear that we do not attribute the presence of bed bugs to Mr Long or his family," they added.

"While we are no longer able to fund further pest control treatment, we have offered to provide Mr Long with details of pest control providers that he can approach directly to help resolve the situation."