Tiny black flies

I have had little tiny flies, that have been in my dining room for about 6 months now. I did have a chilli plant that they all seemed to fly around (though they were not noticeable every day and you only ever see one or two at a time). I threw the plant out a month ago, and have since started growing some new chilli plant seedlings in the same area, and lo-and-behold the flies are back. We do have a couple of other plants in the room but you don't really ever notice any of the flies around them. They seem to like the soil more than the plants themselves.

Anybody have ANY idea where they could be lerking and what they could be? I can't work it out because it always appears like there is just one or two, but no matter how many a squash, there always seems to be one more flying around.

More than likely sciarid flies -live of the compost-more of a nuisance than a serious pest

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/advice/pests_and_diseases/identifier.shtml?black_fungus_gnats

they were not hoping were they?as there is a lot of garden fleas about found some under stones and baskets.

I think Sotongeoff has hit the nail on the head. I shall have to try some of the suggestions  and see what I can do. They are not visibly harming the plants at the moment, but would rather get rid of them once and for good!

 If anyone has other suggestions on ways to get rid of these little gits, please let me know

Will these be the ones that appear (apparently by spontaneous generation) inside covered seed trays?

Yes-you see them jumping on the surface of the compost

Sciarid flies, I'll study the link. I've always shooed them out but never felt they were doing a lot of harm. Wouldn't want them sharing my dinner though

We used to have those too. And fruitflies. I was fed up with them and bought some carnivorous plants. A small sundew does the trick - we have Drosera capensis 'Albino' and its thrived for us. It fed itself with the flies and all we had to do was give it a spot on a south-west facing windowsill and make sure there's always some rainwater in the container. It had more than 20 flower stalks at least so must be loving it here.

That is a genius Idea. Right, i'm gonna try and get a Venus fly trap (or any other recommendations?) this weekend!

I had an infestation from a plant from a well known Swedish furniture company. Even keeping the plant dry in between watering did not help. I used an insecticide and that stopped them.

@Huntertony, a Venus Fly Trap (Dionaea muscipula) will not catch those tiny flies, they're too light in weight for a V. F. Trap. We used a subtropical sundew ( mentioned above).  http://www.growsundews.com/sundews/Drosera_capensis.html   Hope this helps.