Plague of flies returns to Ditchling

Facebook is buzzing with angry comments over the fly infestation, which has happened two years in a row.

Joe Loughran from Dumbrells Court, said: “You can see them on the ground and on the walls of the house. It’s like being under siege because you have to keep the windows shut.”

Near neighbour, Charlotte Combe (pictured) said: “It’s a nightmare because I’m blind, I can’t see them, I can’t hear them but I can feel them hitting my face. I keep using spray but I don’t want to damage my furniture.”

Melanie Whitehouse, from North End (pictured by a fly strip) added: “I’m at my wits’ end. I’ve spent about £30 on fly strips, I can’t open the windows so the house is boiling, and if I give in because I’m expiring from the heat, they all swarm back in.

“Every room in my house is either filled with flies, filled with dead flies on fly strips or stinking of fly spray. It started once the muck spreading started - I smelled it somewhere off North End about ten days ago and within a couple of days the flies began.

“We had all this last year and the environmental health people never solved it. Everybody’s going crazy with it, from Ditchling down to Burgess Hill along the B2112.

“It’s been so hot I had to open my bedroom window and the fly strip filled up in half an hour.”

Steven Teale, a senior environmental health technician at Lewes District Council, informed Melanie in a letter: “This is an issue that some other residents have contacted me about and I have now re-opened my investigation into their origin.

“We are actively seeking the source of the flies and will thoroughly investigate any potential sources which are discovered.”

A district council spokesman told the middy: “Lesser house flies like to breed in rotting vegetation and animal dung, then, in hot weather, come into cool buildings, attracted by food smells.

“The wet start to the year followed by the hot dry summer, mean there is a lot of rotting vegetation, and there are many horses and farms in the area.

“We are advising residents to keep doors and windows shut, make sure you don’t leave out pet food or open compost bins that will attract them.”

Melanie said: “I have lived here for 10 years and this problem has only occurred last year and this. An outside factor is causing this problem and they [the council] need to get to the bottom of it.”