We had a Leatherjackets infestation on our lawn several years ago and in a matter of a week or so we went from having a fully covered lawn to being able to count the remaining individual blades of grass that were left standing…….at the time it was devastating and soul destroying especially considering that we had no clue what the issue was or how to deal with it.
Fortunately there was a solution in the form of the Leatherjacket version of Nemasys which is biological control product (it comes in various coveraging options) that you mix with water and apply to your lawn with a watering can and the added bonus is that it does not affect children, cats and dogs or other pets.
We had to apply it several times over several weeks and then re-seeded the whole lawn afterwards – it worked really well and we were back to a full lawn of grass pretty quickly (although we also had to put netting down to stop all the birds from eating the seeds). We do see odd grubs from time to time and when we do we immediately order the Nemasys and apply accordingly (I am actually about to do an application in the next few days) and touching all available wood we have never had the problem of a bare lawn since.
Depending on how big an issue Brighton have I don’t envy the task ahead of them but wish them all the luck in the world that they are able to get this issue under control and back to race asap.