A PREGNANT mum has been forced to sofa surf after a leak left a massive hole in the ceiling of her council flat.
Libby Barker and her partner Tristan Felton, 28, had to leave their home after heavy downpours caused damage to their Coventry home.
A brown patch appeared on their living room ceiling before a hole formed ten minutes later on Saturday morning.
It kept growing, leaving the couple no choice but to find another place to stay after a repairman said the hole could be exposing them to asbestos.
The young couple, who live with their toddler son, have been relying on their family’s couches, and Tristan claims Birmingham City Council was unable to provide alternative accommodation.
He claims the pair were told they could stay at a bed and breakfast in Edgbaston but couldn’t accept it as Libby wouldn’t be able to get to crucial doctor’s appointments and it was too far from their son’s nursery.
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Their local authority says their Sutton Coldfield property is now safe to move back into even though the roof is being held together by tape.
Tristan said: “We’ve had an absolute joke with Birmingham City Council.
“My partner is pregnant and due to give birth anytime. I’m disabled and I have a two-year-old son.”
After leaving the home to give time for the hole to be fixed, Tristan had returned to find the ceiling with “a sack of water ready to pop at any time”.
He told Coventry Live: “They haven’t sorted the actual problem [with] the roof yet and we still haven’t been offered somewhere to stay. We are having to get taxis back and forth with money we don’t have.
“My son’s routine is knocked right out of shape. He went from sleeping in his bedroom all night long to sleeping three hours last night.
“We are barely sleeping ourselves trying to sort things out. It’s just a nightmare at the moment.”
A Birmingham City Council spokesman said: “We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused. We did start to address the issues when the resident first reported the leak and the majority of the work has now been done, including the roof repairs.
“We want to reassure the tenant that asbestos checks have come back negative.
“We initially offered the tenant temporary accommodation but this was declined. However, the property is now ready for the family to return.”
It comes as a group of students living with a huge hole in their roof said they had warned their landlord before the whole ceiling collapsed.
The tenants moved into their seven-bedroom home in Cathays, Cardiff, in September and had noticed a number of issues that needed attention.
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They claim they’d notified their landlord about the growing crack in the roof as well as the concerning “spongy and damp” bathroom floor above it.
The property’s management company, CPS Homes, said the landlord’s contractor recently performed work that was expected to resolve a leak in the bathroom above the kitchen – but appears now the issue was either misdiagnosed or wasn’t correctly resolved.
