A couple with seven children in a cramped three-bed house for the last two years have been told there is no help provided for large families.
David Payne, 49, and his wife Danielle, 34, have seven children and despite Waverley Borough Council's own environmental health officer finding last November the home is ‘seriously overcrowded’ they still have not been moved.
The council said the home poses a severe threat to the family’s health and safety with the youngest child, two, sleeping in the parents bedroom, SurreyLive reported.
The oldest child is 16 and sleeps in the living room downstairs, while the five other children share the remaining two bedrooms.
Mr Payne said: "We don’t get anywhere with the council, they don’t communicate with us. They have been utterly terrible, and they don’t do anything for bigger families.
"We have our rights, but they’re shutting the door in our faces. It’s wrong."
The family moved to Godalming, Surrey, in 2017, renting a house privately for three years until their landlord decided to sell the property.
Having struggled to find alternative accommodation that was suitable for a family of their size, they appealed to Waverley Borough Council for help in January 2020.
The council agreed it had a responsibility to help prevent the family from becoming homeless, and eventually offered them a small three-bedroom property within close range of the children's schools.
The semi-detached house was offered to the Paynes as a private lease rather than a council tenancy, in order to be fair to other households in the area who had been waiting for a council tenancy for several years.
The family moved into the house in early June but soon realised that it was too small for their needs. Mr Payne suggested to the council that the property's outhouse could be converted into an extra bedroom but could not obtain their permission to complete the works.
He decided to do it himself anyway at his own expense, but the room became too cold to inhabit during the winter months and suffered from severe damp.
In January 2021, David and Danielle contacted the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to claim that the council was not fulfilling its obligations to place the family in suitable housing.
After nine months later the Ombudsman completed its investigation, finding that Waverley Borough Council was at fault because it had not completed a health and safety assessment when placing such a large family in a small home.
Meanwhile, the council was instructed to carry out such an assessment within six weeks, and it sent its environmental health officer to do so.
However, the officer's report in November concluded that the overcrowded house was a Category One hazard, meaning that it posed a "severe threat" to the health and safety of the occupants.
The report also found that the outhouse was too small to convert into a suitable bedroom.
A council spokesperson said in a statement: "Waverley Borough Council takes its housing responsibilities very seriously.
"We work extremely hard to manage the high demand for affordable housing in our area and support people into accommodation that meets their needs. It is our policy not to comment on cases involving specific tenants.
"We allocate properties according to the tenant’s priority level and the amount of time they have been on our waiting list.
"Our stock of properties with four or more bedrooms is limited, and it can take a number of years for tenants to be allocated one of these.
"This is especially the case if the tenant wishes to remain within a tightly defined local area."
