Cockroaches keep coming from next door. Can I keep my flat clear?

Make your flat a hard place to live, with bait waiting for the ones that wander in. The honest part: while a neighbouring flat or a takeaway downstairs is breeding them, some will keep arriving. What ends it is getting the source treated, and that usually means the landlord, the building or the business acting. You can push for that while you protect your own space.

And none of this is your fault. You can do everything right and still get visitors through a shared wall.

How they get from one flat to another

• Along pipes. Water, heating and waste pipes pass through walls and floors, usually with a gap around them.
• Through cable runs and sockets on shared walls.
• Under front doors from shared hallways and stairwells.
• Through gaps in floorboards and the voids behind kitchen units and bath panels.

They move more when a neighbour sprays, moves out or leaves a flat empty. A high floor helps less than people hope: pipes and service shafts run through every storey, and cockroaches climb.

Your side: seal, bait, track

1. Seal the borders. Fill gaps around pipes under the sink, behind the toilet and washing machine, and along skirting boards on shared walls. Fit a door sweep to the front door. In an old house with gappy floorboards, fill the gaps. Spray or powder poured into them alone will not stop cockroaches coming up. See sealing gaps.
2. Bait along the way in. Small dots of gel where pipes enter, along shared walls and behind appliances, so new arrivals find it first. Follow the label on every product.
3. Track where they come from. Put monitor traps near each likely entry point. The trap that keeps catching tells you which gap to work on.
4. Leave them nothing to eat. You do not have to give up snacks, even in a room by a shared kitchen. Keep them in a sealed tub, and keep crumbs and the bin under control.

Ask the building to treat the source, in writing

Write to your landlord, managing agent, building administrator or employer if they provide the housing. Say when it started, where you see them, your weekly trap counts, and that you believe they come from a neighbouring flat or business. Ask them to inspect and treat the source and the flats around it at the same time, because treating one flat alone tends to move cockroaches around. Keep a copy, and add dated photos. Our answer on what to send your landlord has a checklist.

Who has to act depends on your country, your lease and whether you rent or own. In the UK, the council’s environmental health team deals with pests affecting homes and with hygiene in food businesses like a takeaway, and Citizens Advice can explain your rights. Elsewhere, try your local tenancy board or housing authority, a tenants’ union, or for owners, the building administrator or owners’ association. Our guide for renters and a landlord who won’t act go further.

Kids and pets: bait along shared walls and behind appliances has to sit where a child or pet cannot get at it. If a label says to keep a product away from children or pets and you cannot, leave it out.

Guests on the way

You cannot clear a building before family arrive, but you can make sightings rare. Start the plan now, seal the gaps you can find, wipe down and take the bin out every night, and keep traps out of sight behind appliances. If one does appear, you are dealing with it and the building has been told. That is the whole story, and nothing to be ashamed of.

When to push harder

If you have sealed, baited and kept a clean count for four weeks and the traps by your entry points still catch them, the source has not been treated. Send your counts to the landlord or building again, in writing, and if nothing happens, contact the body above that covers your area.