I fled Blackpool's Sunset Guest House with my baby at 2am after finding him covered in bed bugs

A young mum was forced to flee a Blackpool guest house after she found her baby boy riddled with bed bugs.

Blackpool Council arranged for Courtney Collins, 19, to stay at the Sunset Guest House in Palatine Road (not to be confused with The Sunset Hotel in Banks Street) with her one-year-old, where she made the grim discovery.

When Courtney reported the infestation, she said the manager simply told her “if you keep the lights on they don’t come out”.

“They said, ‘we can’t move you to another hotel room because we would be spreading the bed bugs around’, the 19-year-old told the Gazette.

“I told them if I was to leave my little boy in that bed, in that hotel, I would be failing as a mum.

“In my eyes, if I know there are bed bugs and I left my child to sleep in those conditions, that’s what I would call neglect.”

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Courtney said she was left with no option but to call a taxi at 2am and flee the hotel with her little boy.

She is now staying with her mum but Blackpool Council have arranged for her to move into a hostel next week.

“We’ve been staying there for two weeks and I noticed my boy had bites all over him,” said Courtney.

“I thought they might be flea bites at first from his weekend visits to his dad who has a dog.

“But he checked his dog and there was no sign of them. He deflead him to make sure, but my son would wake up covered with new bite marks each day.”

Courtney was horrified when she spotted the real blood-sucking culprits crawling over her son’s sheets one night.

“I saw a bed bug running across his quilt and when I lifted the mattress topper up, they were everywhere!

“I knocked on the staff door but there was no answer at first. After an hour they answered and I was told “if you keep the lights on they don’t come out”.

“It was 2am by then and we couldn’t sleep knowing the beds were crawling with them. So we just had to call a taxi and get out of there.”

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Courtney was forced to throw all of her and her son’s clothes away to prevent spreading the infestation to her mum’s house.

She said: “We’ve had to bin everything. All of our clothes, shoes, underwear. It’s all had to go. It’s like having to start from scratch again. We have nothing left.”

Blackpool Council and Sunset Guest House were approached for comment.