North Dorset District Council Common House Fly Monitoring Programme 2006

Throughout the summer of 2005 the Council received a large volume of complaints regarding Common House Fly infestation in resident’s homes.  In order to assess any infestation that occured in the summer of 2006 the Council performed a Common House Fly Monitoring Programme.

The monitoring programme used a fly trap known as a ‘FlyTower’.  These were placed inside the homes of selected residents and act in a similar way to a conventional fly strip.

A number of monitoring locations were identified in Child Okeford and Marnhull, in addition to a number of ‘control’ locations in similar rural villages where we receive little or no complaints of Common House Fly nuisance.

Seven fly monitoring locations were identified in Child Okeford, these can be identified by a ‘CO’ prefix. The monitoring locations were mainly in the north of the village.  In order of geographical location from North to South the monitoring locations were ordered CO/7 (most northerly), CO/6, CO/3, CO/2, CO/1, CO/4 and CO/5 (most southerly).

Two traps were located in Marnhull, both were situated in the Ham Lane area of the village.

Please note that results are split into two categories;

• Total number of flying insects and;
• Total number of Common House Flies

This information is also available in the form of a graph

The survey identified only extremely low numbers of Common House Fly.  Numbers of all flying insects peaked during the two week period proceeding 23 July 2006.  This coincided with the particularly warm summer weather.

The Council currently has no plans to repeat this monitoring exercise in 2007 but is committed to working proactively to resolve complaints of common and lesser house fly nuisance and possesses a code of practice for the use of poultry manure a common source of such complaints.

All Flying Insects Counted

N/A = Information currently not available

Common House Flies  Counted

N/A = Information currently not available