A Darlington family were forced to stay in accommodation without cooking appliances and then a sickening and dirty temporary flat after being made homeless.

Jenny Thomson, her husband and three-year-old daughter were forced into homelessness last year after being kicked out of their house.

The first temporary home that was chosen for them by a housing officer from Darlington Borough Council was an Airbnb property where cleaners regularly came into the house without announcing their arrival beforehand.

They were then moved into a budget hotel in Darlington, without being told that there were no cooking appliances or washing machine available to them.

Ms Thomson said: "We were plunged into debt having to borrow from friends to eat and clean our clothes.

"Then our housing officer found us a temporary flat 17 days after entering the hotel.

"When we got to the flat I had never seen any place so disgusting in my life.

"There was grime all over every floor and the walls, the oven was unusable and had never been cleaned - I won’t even go into detail about the bathroom, it made me physically sick.

"I had to spend nine days cleaning and working around my daughter and partner, scrubbing someone else’s filth from the whole flat."

Ms Thomson said the family had been told that they had to wait 17 days for the flat because of construction and cleaners.

She added: "We were in that flat for about three months."

Thankfully, the family are now in a new home - but said they were "shocked" by their experience with temporary accommodation.

Ms Thomson added that no family should have to go through such experiences when they are already in a difficult situation.

She said: "Too many people believe the system is easy, carefree and there to be taken advantage of and that just isn’t the case at all.

"We are safe in our new beautiful clean home now as of April but the whole situation was absolutely shocking, no family who are already in despair should have to go through that."

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A Darlington Borough Council spokesman said: “We currently have 85 households in temporary accommodation, 29 of those are in B&B/hotels. Any families with children would be moved into either self-contained or temporary housing as soon as possible and would be in B&Bs/hotels no longer than six weeks.

“We work proactively to support households to find permanent accommodation and follow all guidance around the use of B&B/hotels and ensure we do not use this long term.

“We are also currently reviewing our Preventing Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy.”

Ms Thomson's experience comes after a housing expert highlighted that hundreds of thousands of empty homes across the country could be used to help families in need.

There are hundreds of homeless children in Darlington, County Durham and North Yorkshire.