A MUM and her three children have been stuck in cramped temporary accommodation for months.

The 42-year-old single mum from Chesham, who asked not to be named, was forced to move into temporary accommodation near the Chesham cemetery in July last year after a gas leak made her privately rented home too dangerous.

Now she shares the one-bedroom self-contained flat with her three children aged fourteen, nine and three.

She said: “I feel so trapped. Like a caged animal, and we’ve got nowhere to go. It feels like no one cares.

“We came here because of a gas leak at our previous house. The children are not settling, I’m not settling.

“There’s noise going around.

“I’m trying to put the children to bed but you’ve got people running up and down the stairs, doors being slammed.

“It’s affecting my children. They’ve got nowhere to go and play outside. They haven’t got any space for themselves.”

She is desperate to move but within Chesham, where the family has ties.

“I’ve had to fight to stay locally in Chesham.

“There are properties there that are completely out of my reach because I don’t drive and they’re not on the bus route, like Aylesbury or Weston Turville – places like that are just not suitable.”

She claimed the bidding system for social housing wasn’t fair as some houses got bid on through the phone although all housing that becomes available should go up in the system first for open bidding.

“They’ve just increased the service charge for temporary accommodation, but they still don’t meet all the needs. It’s costing more to be in temporary accommodation.

“The government needs to realise what’s going on, and we’ve got a system that isn’t working. A lot of people are not adequately housed, and they need to look at the system again, and make it fairer for everybody.

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“How many more people sit there and don’t know what to do and where to go.

“It’s so horrible to be in this situation,” she added.

Buckinghamshire Council’s cabinet member for housing and regulatory services Mark Winn said the council cannot comment on individual cases, but it will provide assistance to households at risk of homelessness.

He said: “This accommodation is intended to be temporary and not long term. While these may not be family sized properties, they are intended to provide somewhere safe and secure for the household to live, pending a move to longer term accommodation. 

“Unfortunately, there is a very high demand for social housing across Buckinghamshire and this can mean that households can face a wait for a tenancy, depending on the type and location of the accommodation that they are looking for. The council will always look to support households in temporary accommodation to move on as soon as possible, but this has to be balanced against the wider demands of other households who are also seeking housing assistance from the council, including those on the council’s Housing Register. The council will always apply a fair and consistent approach to the households that it is looking to assist. The council would not treat any application detrimentally due to any comments that the household has made about its situation.”