A Lewisham mum claims she had to throw away her children’s Christmas presents due to the mould and bed bugs in her home, which she has been living with for nearly 10 years.

Roxanne Hollick first moved into her flat in Elliot Bank, then owned by Lewisham Homes and now Lewisham Council, in 2016 with the hopes of creating a “well-loved” family home.

A year later, she started to notice that mould had been growing in every room of her flat.

The mum-of-three told the News Shopper: “Mould was coming through the corners of the rooms and walls and around the windows as well as the corners of window seals.

“And there’s a storage cupboard at the end of our hallway that I use to store my presents when it comes to Christmas and birthdays, but I’ve not been able to use that cupboard anymore because black mould is always growing on the walls.”

Roxanne explained that her bathroom doesn’t have any windows and that all the steam from showers build up and condense into mould.

As a result, she rarely uses the bathroom sink because “all it does is collect mould around the plughole”.

Because of the mould constantly growing back after Roxanne has cleared it away, she has been forced to throw many of her belongings away.

She said: “After Christmas last year, in January and February, I had to throw out everything I bought for the kids because all the teddies had developed mould, and then I also had a bed bug problem.

“I didn’t know if the bed bugs were living inside the teddies or laying its eggs on them, so I had to get rid of everything.”

After this, Roxanne was forced to contact Lewisham Council, but she explained that she refused to pay for the pest control because she’d been reporting the problem to them “for ages”.

She explained that she seems to be the only flat in her block to be experiencing these problems.

Lewisham Council did carry out a service free of charge to deal with the problem.

Roxanne said: “For the first month, I didn’t see anything.

“I thought the problem was gone.

“But then my children started to get bit again, and I started to see some of the bugs, and now we’re back to where we started.”

Roxanne is mum to three children, an 11-year-old daughter, a five-year-old daughter, and a two-year-old son, and their living conditions are affecting their health.

Roxanne said: “My son has pretty much spent most his life on antibiotics because he’s always got a bad chest.

“He’s constantly getting unwell.

“And it’s the same issue with my girls, and I’m constantly having to take them to the doctors to get creams and staff, because they keep getting bites."

Roxanne also said that the schools have called her to collect her children because they’ve got rashes all over them.

She added: “It’s not nice for them, especially for my eldest daughter, because she was getting picked on at one point because her classmates could see the rashes on her arm.

“They kept making fun of her saying, ‘Oh, what is that all on your arms?’ or ‘Why do you keep on itching?’”

Because of the bed bug situation, Roxanne has had to replace her mattresses over and over again.

She said: “This time, I’ve resorted to keeping the plastic on all of them, because I don’t want the same problem.

“But it’s still not going to stop them from getting bit.

“They’ll go on the bed and spread around.

“I just don’t want the bugs in the mattresses because I’m having to spend so much money replacing them, and I can’t afford to do it.”

Roxanne said she has been spending money on bug bombs and sprays, but claims “it just doesn’t do anything” and “it seems to bother them more than anything”.

The family will have to “very reluctantly” spend Christmas at their home again this year.

She added: “I have asthma and I’m constantly getting ill because of it as well as I’m the one that cleans it.

“But it’s gotten to the point where I feel like ‘Why am I calling the council to clean it?’

“If they do it, it’s just going to come back like it does when I clean it.

“It’s not any different, and they need to either find a long-term solution to get rid of it or do something about it, like move my children and I to someplace that doesn’t have this problem.”

A spokesperson for Lewisham Council said: "We are sorry to hear Ms Hollick is unhappy with her home.

"Our Damp and Mould team surveyed this property and performed a mould treatment earlier this year, but will be getting in touch with Ms Hollick to arrange another survey to investigate the issue.

"We have provided information on available pest control options, and our Housing team is supporting Ms Hollick with applying for alternative homes.

"However, there is a severe shortage of social homes in the borough, particularly larger homes, so it is not always possible to arrange a move quickly.

"Ms Hollick is welcome to ask us to investigate these issues further by making a complaint or by contacting the Housing Ombudsman."