From Leicestershire to Carmarthenshire, neighbourhoods are struggling with wave after wave of houseflies. Why are they suffering while others are spared? And is there no alternative to nets and zappers?
Francesca Davies’s living room is absolutely teeming with flies. You can’t enter the contact centre worker’s home without a cluster of insects rising from the sofa or the floor to buzz around your face. Davies and her family live in West Heath, a suburb of the Cheshire town Congleton. Davies’s husband, Alex Andrew, a 29-year-old maintenance engineer, grew up in the market town and he used to think of West Heath as a desirable area, with its well-maintained houses and access to green space. When he and Davies were able to buy a new-build here in 2019 via a shared ownership scheme, they felt incredibly lucky. That is, until they moved in, and realised that every summer swarms of flies descend on their neighbourhood, an issue that is “getting worse”, Davies says.
At the moment, the 27-year-old swats flies out of her young daughters’ bedroom every night before she puts them to bed, and keeps doors and windows closed or covered with fly nets as much as possible. She and Andrew have even bought an industrial fly killer (like the ones often found in fish and chip shops) for their kitchen, as it is impossible to start cooking without attracting even more insects. The pair have become used to the sound of flies “getting zapped throughout the night”, Davies says.
