By JULIA RAVENSCROFT

A MUM-of-two has told how she suffered for eight weeks without a bath when she moved into her Orford council house.

Kim Dix moved to Grasmere Avenue in March this year and has found a catalogue of faults with her new home.

Among the problems were a rusty, unusable bath, dirty walls, holes in the ceiling and the plumbing was on the other side of the kitchen from the washing machine.

Kim said: "When we moved in my mother described it as borderline derelict. It was very dirty and you could feel damp in the air."

For eight weeks the bath was not replaced and Kim had to take her children Peter, aged nine and Andrew, aged four to her mother's house in Latchford every morning before school.

The boys were also frightened by a big hole in their bedroom ceiling which showed through into the loft.

Since then Miss Dix has been able to redecorate her flat with a grant from the council and with help from her father, but has found it difficult to cope with the problems, many of which still exist throughout the house.

She said: "My dad did most of the decorating. He would go to work at 4.30 in the morning and at lunchtime he would sleep at my house, and for the rest of day he would work on the decorating."

Miss Dix says that the house was the only accommodation she was offered by Warrington Borough Council when she moved to Warrington.

Tom Roberts, the council's director of housing, said: "Some people have lower standards than others and when people leave a house sometimes it's in good condition and sometimes it's in a poor condition."

He said that the council makes repairs as soon as it can according to how essential they are, and when complaints are made like those of Miss Dix, an inspector is sent round to assess the problems.

But Miss Dix said: "I still don't think the children like the house. The eldest one would rather have stayed at his nanny's."